Life

She is being told to speak singly Rush not those words And take deep breaths But the reality, by God, is as depressing as it is saddening. Because over this, She almost has no control Many of these battles he loses Some he wins Draining his lungs of air in the process But whatever you do Never look away when he speaks During that vocal battle A moment that characterised by closed eyes May be accentuated by gaped mouths, clenched fists And probably downward glances and tramped feet He is aware But do not look away. ...

That young man possesses a mind perfectly engineered for humour He guards a brain functionally destined for satire But his is the case where all is literally lost in transmission They call him humourless He is being termed a melancholic introvert Because he onlooks when his friends chatter And rehearses when his friends laugh He eventually drops a line or two to maintain his relevance He is blamed for speaking too fast The hot-yam-in-mouth analogy He feigns a smile and whisks it off But you lot know not What it feels having to prep for war the moment those vocal cords begin to vibrate The uncertainty of success And the vivid discomfort of the person On the other side of his face ...

First, she thinks, or maybe not Like everyone else whose thoughts don’t have to rot Words repeated in her cerebral Before vented through her buccal A consistent battle between within and without Almost like a caged bird with no out Wanting to man the skies higher But for a red muscular barrier She silently hopes her tongue and vocal cords Have reached a ceasefire as regards their discords So many jokes and words and clapbacks Consigned to the bins of her mind in black sacks. ...

Thermodynamics (thermo for short) was a course I took in my sophomore year in college. I made zero inquiries about the course beforehand. So I had just two things in my mental arsenal in my first thermo class: basic SAT physics and whatever I had left from my secondary school. A few minutes into the class when the camaraderie with friends phase expired, our professor walked in and everyone adjusted to the current reality. Merhabaler (Hello), he said. A few words of introduction and off he went. His name was Prof A Ulaş. A man whom legends had it that he situated his house between a turbine and an industrial compressor. His love for thermo knew no bounds. A smart man he was. He was on the other side of the class some twenty two years ago and graduated tops. Confidence (or cockiness if you may) was expected. Those unverified legends also opined that the sole purpose of his employment was to keep the class average colloquially termed ‘curve’ at a minimum. His exam questions could be spotted from a distance by their complexity. He had built a reputation around those killer questions. And nothing was going to stop that. Not even two hundred and sixty six second year mechanical engineering students. ...

 What seemed to be an unending struggle with comprehending proportions dates as far back as my fourth year in primary school. I occasionally came across them in algebra but never knew them for what they really were. Evidently, this math concept wasn’t done haunting me. It surfaced once again during my third year in secondary school. But this time around, it looked meaner than usual and it managed to carve out a topic for itself – Variations. Since only little had changed about me since elementary school; I only took a superficial approach to its understanding. ...

With regards to the origin of man, two schools of thoughts come to bear. One could choose to align with the religious school which says God did it all with no questions asked. We could also choose to follow the relatively objective scientific school conjured by the likes of Darwin and Lamarck which concludes that we are descendants of an ape-like dude called Australopithecus. Wherever you decide to pitch your tent on this issue, frankly, is no concern of mine. ...

These last couple of months have been pretty remarkable for me. Apart from the fact that I became more accommodating towards not reaching personal expectations; I learnt to reverse my line of thought on very fundamental issues and most especially had to accede to the fact that being juvenile comes with a little (just a little) touch of stupidity. I clearly recall from unguarded comments I uttered yesteryears where I openly belittled the very idea of summer school. In my defense though, the rough idea I had about summer school was one that was run by some private universities in my country and I was made to believe students usually bought their way through. But I guess karma didn’t see it from my perspective at all; and as such, it didn’t take her too long to locate me in my freshman year at college. ...

As I sat on my student-sized mattress, once again spiraled in the labyrinths of my thoughts; taking a retrospective glance at my juvenile years. I plunged deeper, allowing a sudden feel of uneasiness lance through my body. I intuitively knew I had struck that cord and exhumed that memory. I had exceeded the threshold and there sure as hell was no turning back. All I could see was her face fast-fading into the far horizons. ...

Every fibre of her feeble being echoed songs of debilitation but she was utterly indifferent to their call. Her tired body was the least of her worries as she had just descended a flight of poorly-constructed steps and had been walking on a reddish-brown path for what seemed close to an hour. Her body was screaming “stop” but it seemed only her mind was with her on this; this in turn aggravated the deposition of lactic acid to her muscles. ...