You can dump me
in the general waste bin,
or the lost & found box of a hospital.
You can bury me under
a nameless gravestone
at someone’s abandoned
backyard. You can
treat me like a pub toilet,
write dirty words all over
my walls, scrape them,
and vomit on my tired vinyl floor.
I’ll stand tall. I’m used to
standing tall despite the punches,
earthquakes, waves hitting
my face. I got used to
stormy weathers,
salty waters, deep seas,
and I’ll sail away from you
one day, and until then,
you do you, father.
Ozge Gozturk is a London-based author, scriptwriter, and journalist. Currently, she is studying Creative Writing (MA) at Roehampton University. Her various stories and essays have been published in magazines in the US, the Netherlands, Malawi, the UK, and Turkey, including KaosGL (Turkey), Feminine Collective Raw (USA), Authors Club Anthology (UK), 81 Words Anthology (Victoria Press, UK, 2021). She was shortlisted for WriteNow by Penguin Books and long-listed for The London Library Emerging Writers Programme.