Chapter II: The Page. The Sentence.

Sea Glass in the Womb, a trans memoir

Photo courtesy of a friend

Dedicated to Emine, I want you to see what you helped create. Should you see this, please know that I will never forget you.

I remember walking the school corridors as if wading through a dust-laden dream. Each step kicked up whispers of chalk dust from the cracked tile floors, motes swirling in the light that fell in pale shafts through high windows. The walls were a tired industrial green. Lined with class photos and stern slogans. Above every classroom door hung a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. His tired gaze followed our small bodies. It always felt like he was watching, measuring us against some invisible ideal. I could almost hear him intoning—Çocuklar, çalışkan olun—Children, be hardworking.

Though it was just my guilt and hope projecting onto that framed face, even the silence had authority. A reminder that the republic was always watching.

As a child of six or perhaps seven, I imagined Atatürk stepping down from his frame when no one was around. He would run his hand along the chipped paint of the walls, sighing in mourning. His schools. Reduced to this. I imagined him ghosting through the halls at night. He would listen to our whispers and cries, locked in the wood grain. He would make sure we recited our letters and behaved. The solemn portrait was both the comfort of a father and the threat of a mother. A guardian angel who demanded we become worthy of his sacrifice.

These forays into what could be described as hallucinations were not new. The year before, I had begun hallucinating that I was being chased by a giant boulder made of balloons. I would sprint down the hill, trying with all my might to escape the speeding boulder. I also started tasting numbers. For example, the night air tasted like the number three. The humid summer air was 27. They believed me to be epileptic. I was not.

The hallway carried a medley of familiar scents. Floor polish. Sweat. The ammonia scent of piss from the toilets. Lentil soup. A cloying floral perfume that announced the passage of an old teacher long before she appeared. We would wrinkle our noses at her heavy rose-scented kolonya. Gross. Pungent. A warning.

Desks scrawled with graffiti peeked out of open classroom doors. Hearts. Initials. All carved into cheap wood. Stick figures drawn in blue ink. The triumph of bored children's carving over state furniture.

Each morning, these halls bustled with possibility as we filed to our classes in neat lines, boys and girls in matching navy smocks and stiff white collars. We were meant to look identical. Obedient. Our promise was embroidered in every gleaming collar. The uniform was supposed to erase differences. Instead, they accentuated the smaller things. Postures. Voices. The scuffs on our second-hand shoes. But I knew that even under that uniformity lay a thousand chapters of dissent. Mine was just harder to name.

The school was sold to us as a temple of promise. Study hard and become a credit to your family. A modern Turk who is worthy of Atatürk's dreams. It was all bull. We were all working-class children, some so poor that they couldn't afford a social class. The school was torment. Yes. Torment. It was equally a house of punishment. Hierarchy seeped into everything. The teacher's word was law. Sharia. They ruled over us like minor despots. Even the fifth-year children lorded it over the first-years in the pecking order of the playground. Discipline was strict and often cruel. I recall the sharp crack of a wooden ruler on my tender palms vividly. The slow, humiliating walk of a classmate ordered to stand in the corner for an hour.

Shame was woven into our routine. Weekly ceremonies where the top students who could read a solid paragraph were applauded, and the rest of us felt like fire ants. Moments when a teacher would announce exam scores aloud. The low scorers would burn with embarrassment. The boys were scolded for any softness. Don't cry. Real men don't cry. While girls were chastised if they were not meek and mild. Every day held the possibility of a very public correction. A ritual of shame dressed up as discipline. For a child like me, sensitive and already secretive, it was a daunting task to undertake.

My greatest terror in those years was being called on to read aloud one day. The mere thought of it sent ice through my veins. I would slouch behind the taller kids. I would avoid the teacher's roaming gaze whenever she held up the reading book. If her eyes landed on me, my throat would seize. On the rare occasions I was cornered into standing and reading a passage, the letters on the page wriggled like black insects. I stumbled, guessing at words. My cheeks would flush rouge as giggles spread across the room.

Once, in desperation, I recited a fairy tale passage from memory instead of reading the printed text. I hoped no one would notice. Obviously, they did. They could read. I could not. Upon realising I had deviated from the text, the teacher frowned. Ezberden okuyor. He is reciting from memory. The shame of that moment––caught in my clumsy deceit––left me wishing I could vanish into the floor tiles. I was illiterate and trying to hide it. A little pretender with a book upside down in his trembling hands. Instead of encouraging me or helping me, they scolded me.

Yet, for all my troubles with the written word, I was ravenous for stories. At home, I curated a secret trove of books which I had stolen. Bright paperbacks from Can Çocuk Yayınları with their cheerful logos, a dog-eared copy of Fadiş, and even a battered edition of Küçük Prens (The Little Prince) sat in a hidden shoebox under my bed. I could not actually read these books. No. Not in any fluent sense. Alas, that did not stop me.

I would trace the titles on the coves with my finger, whispering their names as if casting a spell. I inhaled the scent of old ink and paper and imagined the world inside. In the illustrations, I found companions. I followed the little prince across the desert sands. I pretended I was Fadiş, the brave girl wandering from village to village in search of home. In those moments, it didn't matter that the lines of text were hieroglyphs. I made up my own stories to fill the void. I lived a hundred lives in secret. Those books were my talismans. They were proof that somewhere, answers and adventures waited in words if only I could unlock them.

Underneath all these battles with letters and lessons, another struggle churned. Unspoken. I felt a constant dissonance between what the world expected of me and what I thought I was. It was as if everyone had a script and role for me. Son. Boy. Little man. I was fumbling my lines. Inside, there was an emptiness. An internal void that I tried desperately to fill with fantasies and stories. In my dreams, I became someone else. Sometimes, I sprouted wings and flew away from school over red-tiled roofs. Other nights, I dreamed I was a girl in a white dress wandering through those corridors untouched by fear. In those dreams, no one shouted, no one sneered at me. No. It was perfect. I would wake up shaken, both sorry to leave the dream behind and relieved that I was still unseen by my secret.

By day, I developed aversions that I couldn't explain to others. I loathed the barber's clippers, buzzing at my scalp as Mother forced my hair into a tight, boyish cut. Tears of shame prickled my eyes under the smock as she praised how clean and handsome I looked. As I mentioned earlier, I avoided rowdy soccer games. I cringed at the jostling and shouting that seemed to come so easily to other boys. Even the language of boyhood felt foreign to me. I had no interest in the toy cars and plastic guns laced with tiny amounts of gunpowder that let off a genuine bang that my peers coveted.

Instead, I found solace in obsessive fixations. I lined up my storybooks in precise order. I counted the tiles in the hallway. I fixated fiercely on any hint of gentleness in the world. I clung to petite beauties. A rainbow in an oil puddle. A kind smile from an auntie. They were liferafts. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I only knew what others said. I act like a girl. It was an insult and not a compliment. Some part of me felt both hurt and seen.

Everything changed when Emine Öğretmen arrived. I was seven when she took over our class. She was a young teacher fresh from the city of Adana, assigned to our school by the Ministry. She was tall and slender, and from the moment she introduced herself in her soft, melodious voice, I was spellbound. Emine was striking in a way that seemed to slow time. She had warm sepia-brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when she laughed. And laugh she did. Freely. Often.

In a school crammed with harsh voices, hers was gentle. Honeyed. Stuffed full of encouragement. Instead of barking Susun! Like other teachers, she would clap her hands in a little rhythm to get our attention. Haydi çocuklar, birlikte öğrenelim. Come on, children. Let's learn together. Learning was no longer a chore. It was no longer a solitary pursuit. It was an adventure. An adventure we could all go on.

She carried the scent of her home with her—literally. A dab of orange blossom oil on her wrists. When she passed by, a trace of the orange blossom lingered in the air. It was wonderful.

Emine noticed things others didn't. When I struggled, she didn't single me out to ridicule. No. Instead, she would crouch by my desk after lesson and whisper—We'll figure it out together, okay?—Other teachers scolded me for laziness, but Emine never did. When I faltered on a word, she would kneel by my desk, her sturdy hand resting lightly on my shoulder, and whisper the word softly so only I could hear, then give an encouraging nod to continue. She never shamed me in front of the class. In her eyes, I saw patience, as if she had all the time in the world for me to find my voice.

One afternoon, as the kids ran off for recess, she gently kept me back. I stood by my desk trembling, expecting a scolding for the reading exercises I had bungled. But Emine didn't scold. No. She never scolded. She pulled a chair over and sat beside me so we were eye-to-eye. The winter sun slanted through the window, catching the ever-present dust motes in a golden beam around us.

Cinematic slowness took over my senses. I recall the soft creak of her chair. The dust danced in the beam of light. The graceful way she pointed at the page. She had laid a hand on my shoulder––a simple, steadying touch. Let's read it together. Her voice was low and warm.

I could smell the orange blossom on her wrist mixed with the clean chalk on her fingers. My heart thumped so loud I was sure she could hear it. We inched through the sentences. Her patience was endless. When I finally managed to sound out a full line correctly, she gave a small, angelic laugh of delight. She squeezed my shoulder. Aferin sana! Good job! She praised.

The spot where her hand had been felt almost sacred. A glowing warmth radiated through my body. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. I felt safe. I felt seen. I felt unexpectedly cherished.

It was as if she had touched the first word that had ever been written into me. As if her fingers had trailed the forgotten script along my spine and reminded my bones of their native tongue. The orange blossom of her wrist didn't smell like perfume anymore. It was a prophecy now. Like the dust that rose from martyrs' robes as they walked barefoot through golden cities.

I sat there, trembling in my little wooden chair. Intellectually convulsing. No longer a child but a vessel. Filled to the brim with the sacredness of words that I didn't know how to carry. Her praise was not a sound but an incantation. Aferin Sana. The syllables were stitched into me like embroidery done by candlelight. I did not just want her approval. I wanted to live inside it. Bury myself in the folds of the fat in her lifting voice. I wanted to crawl into that orange grove that must've bloomed behind her ribcage and fall asleep among its blossoms.

She made me believe that maybe God had not forgotten me. That the divine came not in thunder or scripture but in the chalk-dusted hand of a woman who smelled like citrus and called me clever.

And in that moment, I—the frightened, feral thing that I was—believed that one day I would write. Not just read. Not just survive. But write. Bleed black ink. Make music from the aches and pains. Tell stories with the same trembling beauty she had breathed into me.

Because she had touched me. Not like a teacher touches a student, but like a priestess brushes the forehead of a foundling girl on the steps of the temple. Like someone who knew. Like someone who saw.

From that day on, I would have done anything to make Emine proud. I started arriving early just to greet her with a bright Günaydın öğretmenim! and bask in her returned smile. During lessons, I hung on her every word; the fixation I'd once given books now transferred entirely to her. It was, in hindsight, unhealthy. She praised my most minor improvements. Each careful letter I wrote. Each hesitant sentence I read aloud. With her encouragement, I began to believe that I wasn't as stupid as I thought.

I lived for those moments when her attention fell on me and me alone. I caught myself daydreaming about her at home. She would take my hand and guide me. I imagined her reading me stories. Stories I finally understood.

At night, I whispered made-up tales about a kind teacher and a lonely child who ran away into an orange blossom orchard and lived under an eternal spring. Half of me dreamed for Emine to somehow adopt me. I wanted her to whisk me away. Take me away to somewhere less harsh. More homely.

The other half felt something more confusing. A flutter in my chest. Whenever I pictured her face, a longing to be near her went beyond the comfort of motherly affection. Like most things back then, I didn't have a name for such feelings. But I know now that I was in love with her in my own strange, innocent way. She was the first person who ever made me feel special. In a childhood otherwise defined by fear and shame, Emine was a beacon of light. A heavenly light. And I, moth-like, was irresistibly drawn to her warmth.

One afternoon, the rain held us hostage during recess. Emine pulled a little cassette player from her desk drawer and said she wanted to share a song with us. The children fidgeted. Half listening. But I sat straight. I was alert to anything she touched. She pressed play, and a soft, mournful lilt of a man's voice filled the classroom—Out in the West Texas town of El Paso—I didn't understand the words, not then. But Emine smiled and whispered to me—It's a story. He falls in love, and then he does something terrible for it—she translated line by line in low Turkish. Her voice painting deserts and cowboys. Jealousy and death. I sat transfixed. Heart stilled. Breath shallow. It was the first time I understood that a song could hold a world. That a man's voice could conjure ghosts and passion and consequences.

Emine had cracked something open in me. Something ancient. From that day on, I didn't just want to read stories––I wanted to live inside them. I wanted to make them. I wanted to be that someone in El Paso.

With Emine, I absorbed the tenderness of narrative like a sponge. I learned that stories can be vessels for both longing and a brighter future. I realised that something inside me could ache with no name and still be given life. But it was Hasan who taught me the tenderness of bodies. Who took the unspoken thing and wrapped it around our minds. With Emine, I was the reader. With Hasan, I was the heroine. Between them, a door to a secret chamber was bulldozed open. One that I would spend the rest of my life walking through.

Emine gave me a map. But it was Hasan who handed me the key. Emine showed me the magic of narrative. The way it could hold ache like water in cupped hands. Hasan showed me that the ache was mine. It pulsed beneath my skin and shimmered in knowing silence. Emine touched my shoulder and called me clever. Hasan took my hand and called me beautiful without ever saying a word.

One loved in the light. The other loved in the shadows. But both left their fingerprints on the girl I was trying so hard not to become. When I think of who I am now, I know this much: if Emine was my first page, Hasan was my first sentence.

If Emine was a balm, my mother was lemon juice on a wound. She was everything Emine was not. Where my teacher spoke in dulcet tones, my mother's voice was sharp enough to cut diamonds. I would tiptoe home on afternoons buoyed by Emine's praise, only to be met with barked orders the moment I entered the door. Take off your shoes! Go collect the bread!

She never greeted me with a smile. She never greeted me with a hug. She greeted me with a checklist of future failures waiting to happen. In her eyes, children were equal contributors, and I was perpetually falling out of line.

My mother's displeasure could boil over into fury without warning. Once, when I dawdled instead of sweeping the stoop––lost in a daydream––she exploded––Enough, you brat!––she screamed. Her face twisted like bombed-out steel. Before I could duck, she flung her slipper across the room. The worn leather missile struck my nose with a thwack. I bit my lip hard. I swallowed any cry of pain. Crying would make it worse. One tried their utmost not to cry.

As sure as you are born, she advanced on me, remaining slipper in hand—Ağlama! Kız gibi zırlama sakın!—Don't you cry! Don't snivel like a girl!—

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Her words stung as much as the blows I braced for. In those moments, I learned that to survive her wrath, I had to smother every tenderness in me. I forced myself to meet her eyes without shedding a tear. To nod rapidly and mumble apologies until, at last, she relented with a final shove.

In the league table of my mother's hate, I was a constant winner. She hated me the most. Every aspect of me seemed to provoke her. If I sat with my legs crossed too daintily or forgot myself and sang along to the tune on the radio, I'd be told to sit like a boy. Whenever I was told to fetch my brother Ahmet, or indeed, any of my siblings from playing in the street, I would, admittedly very campily, wave and shout Yohooo! And my mother would be rendered incandescent with rage.

Her idea of a son was a creature I failed daily to be. Brave. Loud. Unquestioning. She wanted a little soldier. I was more like a skittish cat. My father offered no refuge. No protection. He was a quiet, almost timid man. He mostly kept to the sidelines, sitting on his old Syrian rocking chair. On the rare occasion he attempted a gentle intervention during her tirades, she would wheel on him and silence him with a glare. He would retreat behind his newspaper or slip out for a smoke, leaving us alone in the storm. My mother ruled our home. Her word was the gospel. My father survived by obeying until he didn't.

In her yoke, I felt utterly entrapped. I tiptoed through my childhood at home. I tried to compress myself into the shape she required. The performance of her idea of a son was one I put on daily. Stiff. Unnatural. Inside, I ached with confusion. If being a boy meant being hard and angry, like she wanted, then I knew I wasn't a proper boy at all. But I had no permission to be anything else. I often lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling, wishing I could have just disappeared into one of the books. Become someone. Anyone.

The contrast between the tender world Emine nurtured in me at school, and the tyrannical order at home was dizzying. Each afternoon, I left the warmth of Emine's classroom only to step into a colder warzone. I learned to armour myself with silence. Yes. No. Please. Thank you. Even as an unnamed part of me withered from neglect.

In those years, I had already begun living a double life. The timid, dutiful son by evening. The curious, hopeful child under Emine's wing by day. The two halves of me barely recognised each other, and the strain of keeping them together carved a loneliness deep into my heart.

The breaking point came on an otherwise ordinary afternoon in the schoolyard. A boy named Kerim had been tormenting me for weeks. He was a stocky bruiser with scabbed, purple knuckles. A fifth-year tyrant who prayed on younger children. I usually managed to avoid his notice by keeping to the shadows. But that day, he found me sitting under the sycamore tree at recess. I was reading my copy of Fadiş, and for all intents and purposes, I was minding my own business. Kerim and his cronies loomed over me.

––Girl, what are you reading? Girl, are there fairies in the story like you?––he jeered, noticing the little girl on the book's cover. My face burned. I mean, it was physically burning. I clutched my book to my chest and mumbled sheepishly that it was none of his business. That only egged him on. I looked most cowardly. I couldn't look him in the eye. Kerim snatched the book out of my hands with a snicker––Give it back!––I protested, lunging, but he was taller and easily held it out of reach.

He flipped through the pages theatrically. He sounded out the title in a mocking sing-song. Again, I was simply likened to a girl. But this time, when he did so, and the words dropped from his lips, it was like a lit match onto oil. Something in me ignited. All the fear. All the shame. All the anger that had been coiling inside me exploded in an instant. I snapped.

With a feral yell that startled even me, I launched myself at Kerim. One moment, he was laughing; the next, my small fists were colliding with his face and chest. We topped to the ground in a tangle of arms and dust. A circle of children, as they do, quickly gathered, as is always the case. Their gasps and excited shouts echoed as if from a distant land. I was lost in a red haze. Kerim's fist clipped my cheek. I felt no pain. It only fueled my frenzy.

I clawed and swung with a strength I didn't know I had. He tried to pin my arms, but I wriggled free and, with a strangled cry, bit down on his shoulder. He howled. He scrambled back in a panic. It must have been a wild sight. Tear-streaking face. Teeth bared like a rabid cat. Kerim stared at me in shock. He clutched his shoulder where my teeth had left marks. There was a beat of stupefied silence around the yard. Then I realised I was the one kneeling over him. He was the one snivelling. Eyes wet. The boy who had taunted me for crying was now blinking back tears himself in front of everyone. I shouted at him––Who is the fairy now? Who is the girl now?––I realise that I stooped to his level, but allow me a brief moment of dominance. I did not use those words in offence but rather to cement the new order. A strange triumphant bitterness welled up inside me.

A teacher's whistle finally cut through the frenzy. Strong arms pulled us apart. I hadn't even noticed Emine sprinting over. She hauled me to my feet. Kerim slunk off, wiping his eyes and cursing under his breath. Humiliated. I stood there panting. My knuckles throbbed, and my lip was bleeding. I was surrounded by stunned faces. Ahmet had turned pale.

Inside my chest, a wild exhilaration warred with horror at myself. I had fought back. I had been vicious and unrestrained. Victorious. In that playground monarchy, I had momentarily become something like a king––at least not a victim. Kids I didn't even know were patting my back, Whispering words of awe. Kerim avoided my gaze forevermore.

I should have felt proud. Instead, as the adrenaline ebbed, I was filled with a strange emptiness. The crowd's excitement faded away, and what remained was the fact that I had revealed a part of myself I didn't even know I had––a capacity for violence that mirrored the very people who tormented me.

After the fight, something shifted, not just in the eyes of the boys. Hasan began walking closer to me. He had always been there in the background. A soft silhouette in the noise. My best friend in a distant way. They trailed behind the crowd of boys but never a part of it. We were both observers. Both are made wrong by the same rules. We recognised each other long before we even spent a great deal of time together, besides playing in the street every so often.

It started small. We played jump rope. We exchanged quiet smiles across the school. A shared joke muttered between lessons. Then, a walk home. Then, another. We lived in neighbouring streets. To stretch those moments longer, we invented detours. We began slipping down the narrow alley behind the school. Our secret path. A path cluttered with cigarette butts and discarded tin cans. The walls leaned close together. Graffiti-scrawled and damp. But it felt like ours. In the corridor between worlds, we were real.

Hasan never spoke much, but they didn't need to. His silence felt like a language I already knew. He had dark eyes that blinked slowly. Deliberately. It was like he was thinking in pictures. He tugged nervously at the hem of his sweater. He squinted sometimes when he was trying to cry. I liked the way he moved. He was not a boy pretending to be tough but like someone trying to remain small. Safe. I recognised the posture. I wore it myself.

One day, he pulled a fluorescent pink scarf from his satchel. Without a word, he draped it over his head, letting it fall like a veil. He smiled. He mentioned a name that would later become much more profound. The alley was quiet. A cat blinked down at us from a tin lid. Our new pet. I stared at them, and something in my chest was pried open. Of course. Of course. Of course. I reached out and took the other end of the scarf. I wrapped it around my head, too. My breath was trembling in my lungs.

Everything morphed. The air blew hotter. The silence grew louder. The world knew to hush. A cold gust of air curled through the space like a snake waggling a forgotten tongue. It lifted the edges of the scarf before settling it gently back down. The bricks on the wall began to glow with attention. The world, just for a hot minute, noticed us. The tin roof above us let out a long sigh. The cigarette butts at our feet began to glow. I could feel the fabric not on my skin but inside it. It had threaded itself into my soul.

The pink scarf was not fabric but a great deliverance. A myth spun not from thread but from unshed tears of eyes yet unnamed. When Hasan pulled it from their satchel, it was as if they had unsheathed a blade that could slice through our very existence. A fine, flawless cut.

The alley paused. Even the air was dumbstruck. The scarf was neon. Frayed. Absurdly bright against the rot-stained walls. Yet, it shimmered. It shimmered with a reverence no mosque could contain.

They draped it over his head with the solemnity of a mother. Then they looked at me. Not as a boy. Not as a friend. But as a pale window. When I took the other end, my hands were shaking. As I wrapped it around my own head, something ruptured. The sky peeled open. We were no longer children. We were daughters of the hidden, anointed and necessary silence. Crowned in polyester pink. Under that scarf, time folded in on itself. The alley vanished. The world dropped away. We were angels pretending to be gutter rats. We were hidden prophets in exile. That scar was the first sanctuary we had ever known.

We collapsed in giggles. Our faces are hidden beneath the same pink veil. We pressed our foreheads together and whispered a list of names we weren't brave enough to claim outside of the alley. That was the first time I heard their name. Dilara.

We would grasp each other's hands tightly, afraid If I let go, we might forget something we had dared to believe. I was frightened they would drift away and forget everything they had told me. Sometime later, in that alleyway, we kissed. Tentatively. A brush of lips, clumsy, terrified and wholly ridiculous. Trembling with the weight of everything it means. We never spoke of it again. We didn't need to. That kiss contained a language no one had taught us to speak. A grammar of secret longing. A longing for a kind of love that was so far outside of the rules that no one knew what to do with it. We were only young, but we had already been told who we were not allowed to be. In that kiss, we told each other something truer.

The school, of course, informed my parents about the fight. I sat through the principal's scolding with my head lowered. I cared not for what they had to say, but rather, I dreaded the punishment awaiting me at home. Much to my surprise, that evening, my mother didn't scream or strike me. Instead, I caught an eerie glint of approval in her eyes. She dabbed disinfectant on my cut lip. She said nothing but a smirk that, in itself, said a million things. The irony was bitter. The one time she was pleased with me was when I came home bloodied from behaving like an animal. I should have been glad to escape her wrath for one, but her rare approval felt like a total and unequivocal condemnation. To win a nod from her, I had become something I never, ever wanted to be.

Late that night, I lay awake in the flickering darkness of the room. My bruises aching in tune with my heart. The house had fallen quiet. In that faint evening glow, I pulled out a small notebook––one Emine had given me to practice writing. My hands trembled a bit as I opened it to a blank page. I could barely write a complete sentence on my own, but I knew enough to string letters into simple words. I wrote Ben...(I am) and stopped. The pencil is hovering. I didn't know how to finish that sentence. I am what? A boy? A girl? A monster? An idiot? The lines blurred in my teary eyes. A drop of water stung the page. I hadn't realised I was crying.

Wiping my cheeks, I closed the notebook and reached for Fadiş again. Gently, I smoothed the crumpled pages Kerim had tried to ruin. In the dim light, I traced the printed words slowly, mouthing them one by one. I understood only fragments of sentences, but each one I deciphered felt like a triumph. The story was about a girl enduring hardship, yet she found her way. At least, that's what I imagined. I liked to think Fadiş survived by her wits and hopeful heart. Holding that book, I felt a fragile kinship with her.

As I finally set the book aside, exhaustion pulled me under. In the silence, I could almost hear Emine's voice in my mind. Gentle. Encouraging. Keep going. You will succeed. I let the imagined comfort wash over me. My world was still the same. A rigid school by day. A harsh home by night. I was still a child lost in between. But for the first time, I felt the stirrings of something new inside. A determination to someday break free of all the labels and expectations. If the words to define me didn't exist yet, I would string together my own.

In the half-awake haze, I dreamed of walking through an orange grove with a book in my hand. The air is sweet and golden. No one shouted or sneered. I was neither a boy nor a girl. Maybe I was both. An invisible child made visible in my own conditions. The loneliness had not vanished. Now, it glowed softer. Lit by a distant promise. I fell asleep with the taste of hope. Composing silent lullabies in a new language yet to be written.

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