Istanbul, 27.05.2025

No one welcomed me. .

No one needed to. .

I started waking up here.
The city didn’t ask for anything,
so I gave what I had —
my time,
my time,
my time,
my attention,
my quieter self.

Some days, I walked for hours. Other days, I stayed in. Both felt like a kind of permission.

I stopped trying to define it.
I let it be what it was —
loud, uneven,
alive in ways I didn’t fully understand.—
I wasn’t looking for home.
But I stayed.
And that became enough.
.