'my mother's censorship' by Hatice Acikgoez

my mother’s recipes are warm

hot even

sometimes her food

manages

to burn my tongue

i stick it into water

and feel

a soft tingling

skin separating

from flesh

i think to myself

this must be the taste of love everybody talks about

when I finish

tongue blackened

peeled skin

on the dinner table

she asks

do you want some more

black flesh on red ground

i show her

the damages

she fills up my plate anyway

Copyright. Hatice Acikgoez.

Hatice Acikgoez is an author from Germany who enjoys writing pretty much anything-from short stories about weird robots to poems about brains that live in glass jars. Catch Hatice at haticeacikgoez.de.