Some days I feel as if my baby won’t stop aging, already going as if at twice the normal speed, as if she’s on a freeway to heaven, riding the clouds in the same way her favorite cartoon character would a magic carpet, all while I watch her as if I’m the clown in all this, as if I’m the villain, as if I am the fire, the fire, the fire, as if she has the capacity to burn everything I hate with her love, as if I can’t stand the truth of this life I’ve built for her with some half-baked lies and half-said truths, but then she coos at me out of the blue as if to remind me of her presence, as if I wasn’t thinking about her already, but I act as if I wasn’t thinking about her already, as if I haven’t watched her grow from this mole to a mound, as if I haven’t watched her father and I turn from these total strangers to a couple of brokenhearted capitalists in just a matter of years, as if I should get your shit together, as if I should could would not stand this anymore, as if we’ve lost the juice of everything that got us going, as if I were not pretending before, as if I could magic it all that’s lost between us back into being, as if I could land back on her world without so much as a scratch, as if she’ll be there to greet me, as if she’s got enough time to witness it all, as if she hasn’t witnessed it already.

A writer of Turkish descent, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, DIAGRAM, Normal School, Vestal Review, Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and American Literary Review, among other places. His stories have been selected or nominated for anthologies (Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf Top 50) and awarded a finalist status at various literary contests, including the 2022 Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Award. He’s currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.