How, in this instance, time forgets to blink — hold your nose kid jump in — and everything is what it ever is, what it ever was, what it will ever be.

Let's call it Eternity.

What am I on about? Love, of course. Haven't you ever been?

Your eyes’ cryptic ellipses... 

Men read them once and sail for years in their echo. 

They think you are the patient Penelope, Istanbul. They come excited, lining up outside your door, ready for your bow's impossible challenge.

But they persist, oblivious to the deceit, clapping and cheering for an encore.

As soon as the Sirens return on stage, Alexander’s sullen sister storms out of the crowd’s lip, all wet and fuming, grasps the microphone, starts screaming: It isn’t true, it isn’t true! Don’t believe what they say. There is no heart! The rib cage is nothing but an empty tunic.

Wow there. Settle down my dear.

I too sailed to reach your streets, Istanbul.

Needless to say, it took me a while. 

For so long I was forbidden to venture north. I think because someone stole something — perhaps a feeble shadow from a non-existent wall — and then came anger, tears and centuries of cracked watermelon wars, and words words words.

I must have mentioned anger. 

I must have mentioned anger. 

Like that time when someone stepped on the gas, full speed in his oil lungs, a cigarette lit between his V-sign fingers. Premature. He took one sip and flicked it away. 

Up it went, triple somersault swirling dervish sparks all the way down to road verge grass, then smoke and fire. 

They call us enemies now, Istanbul. Star crossed, all played out before, of course. 

It's only your name that's my enemy...

That’s right, Romeo. Language is the universal enemy. Don’t sweat the words boy, name her anything you want.

or any name that tells you all men are made from the same rib: A woman's lips.

If nothing works, name her Silence please.

Who am I kidding? All men are strangers, Istanbul.

You greet and take them in, hot air steam eucalyptus leaves, and silk tea all the way from China. Perspire freely. 

And just when they rest their heads to sleep, you crack the Trojan horse open, split the land and let the Bosphorus in. 

Not all men can walk on water, of course. All they can do is build bridge after bridge, try to heal the distance, the wound, the painful whip.  

Men go to sleep to wake up to go to work — any work to adorn the hungry, meaningless white walls.

It's not blasphemy — I respect any devotion to an ultimate meaning. No life is meaningless. No line is meaningless. 

Even the smallest lodomethane spot, every curving curve, every line's beginning and end, the calculated trail of every brush: these are all meaning, words spoken from the hand's mouth. 

Stare enough and you may see the eyes that stare back when you cross the road, the eyes of everyone you'll ever meet or ever know, that sleeping moon face on your sea salt torso, his warm breath, his gentle snore, your hand that doesn't know exactly when to reach out when to take his hand what will that mean for how long could that ever heal whatever heals this bastard endless loneliness. 

Love conquers the world then takes a break to smoke, of course.

You know all about conquerors, Istanbul. You wear your armour well: a house filled with catastrophic cats.

I can't hide. They find me everywhere, tiptoe their little cat feet in and out of my sight, in and out of this world and their own parallel elegance.

They carry around whispers, thoughts, human words as if we are wind as if we are water, utter complete disrespect for our made-up beds of sanity. 

With what precision these purring roaming particles ask for my attention then strike fearlessly with indifference. Such cruelty to be and not to be — there is no question — the here and not here, the smile not even Mona Lisa dares to dream.

Of course hysterical, and so useless — no number of feathers can lift this rock's shameless obsession with itself. Hello gravity. 

I tried. I thought I could lift our tissues our nerves our bones our blood up there with the sky's freedom to choose to marry to ask to tell, to not be the inverted blue bowl of ignorance. Sweet blue ignorance, little baby eyes, home of God. 

It's not blasphemy — I respect any devotion to an ultimate landing. I am up there and all I can think is how to land where I belong, on your flower streets, Istanbul, the windows that let the ruins in, the stones that shed their skin, your sweat icing sugar winter coat, pomegranate disco crown king. I can't even make myself say rosewater.

Rose water.

Ancient embrace, ancient kiss — your words not mine — and everything becomes bigger than what it is. Eternity and one more wish. 

The rest is swirling history.