Crimson Traces

The station air hums with departures. Brakes exhale, announcements crackle overhead, and somewhere behind me a child cries once before being shushed into silence. The high-speed train to Ankara waits with its nose angled east, silver and intent.

Inside, the sound changes—padded by upholstery, softened by recycled warmth. Our bags thud into overhead racks. I take the window seat out of habit and profession. Observation is the last stable country I have.

When the train pulls away, the waterfront peels back in a blur of cranes and container stacks. The motion settles into a steady pulse beneath my feet—steel on steel, eastward. Toward Ankara, Lake Van, a border that is either protection or wound, depending on who you ask.

A slim notebook rests on my knees. My pen hovers, moves, pauses. Red ink. Outside, winter fields unspool in slow bands—bare earth, frost-bitten grass, a distant minaret standing alone like a raised finger.

Across from me, Karim sits too straight for a civilian journey. His eyes move in practiced arcs along the carriage, mapping doors, counting faces. Two rows back, Mitra cradles a paper cup of coffee so hot it must hurt, staring at something beyond the window. Woman suspended between the children she left and the men she no longer trusts to bring them back.

The carriage smells of tea and old cigarette smoke clinging to wool. Conversation reduces to murmur—languages folding over one another, intimate and indifferent at once.

Somewhere in that wash of sound, the old line about humans being members of one body drifts through my mind. Saadi, if memory serves. On good days it feels like instruction. Today it feels like a bad joke told at the edge of a map.

My pen touches paper. I write the date, the direction—east—and the simplest sentence I can manage: I do not know if we are heading toward repair or the place where things come apart for good.

My page fills slowly with looping red script. Karim scans the aisle.

Mitra
I knew Elena and Asdar were together last night, the rhythm of their bodies, her voice carrying by echo. It left me restless, a coil of want I couldn’t sleep off. Why should Elena have all the hunger and thunder? When Karim passes, careful, collected, oblivious, I catch his wrist, pull him close—claiming my jolt of immediacy.
I press him to the cold plastic, mouth on his, bodies burning hotter than the train’s yellow light. His hands hesitate, then clutch my hips harder, searching ground. I’m not gentle. I want his palm’s press, the fervor in his grip, the shock of being wanted as fiercely.

Karim
Mitra floods my senses—her mouth demanding, body refusing doubt, everything pressing between us. Heat rises, but Elena’s name stirs in my chest: wild, impossible devotion. I ache for her, terrified she’ll see; terrified Mitra feels my pulse, catches the tension snapping. I almost whisper Elena. I almost betray.
Mitra rides with rhythm meant to erase all else. I clutch, drowning in sensation—hope layered with guilt: Please, let Elena not know. Please, let Mitra not hear the name bursting free as pleasure takes me.

Mitra
I savour his trembling, the way he lets go: energy sharp, ragged, private. He gathers himself, eyes wild but shuttering. I smooth my hair, straighten my skirt, release the lock. I don’t look back. That’s hers to wonder, not mine.

Karim
Alone, I fix my shirt, flush burning, pulse racing. The door hisses to corridor chill; I step out, masking desire in composure. Thoughts split—Elena, Elena—hoping guilt stays locked, hoping Mitra missed her name nearly breaking free.

Elena
Mitra returns first: cardigan smoothed, cheeks flushed beyond cold air.

Karim trails, loose-hipped, that post-release ease you know from walking away yourself. It catches me: quick ache—not jealousy, but lost echo—then warmth. They deserve this stolen breath amid our scant lightness.

I turn to the window before eyes meet: fields unwinding, shadows slashing pale mountains. Time blurs in light-streaks, motion. I scratch notebook lines as the train pitches slow. Curt Turkish announcement crackles: border nears.

I.Ph.