My first home was warm with four walls, a ceiling and a beautiful garden I’d play hide and seek in. It had a large mahogany door with Anatolian symbols carved along the edges and a big evil eye hanging at the top rail. I don’t know how, nor do I know when, but one day, I woke up to it hanging on the living room wall— That’s when I saw the world as it was for the first time.
The air smelled of tea, spices and chocolate that constantly found its ways into my pockets, melting in my hands and staining my shorts. At times, the salty, wet scent of the Marmara sea would drift through the space the door used to be and tickle my nostrils. I’d pet the port dog, Miço, press my akbil and throw bits of simit at oncoming seagulls, rejoicing in their caws of gratitude as I crossed the Bosphorus. The idea of the walls stretching never crossed my mind.
Then, one day, my home changed. Its walls shifted and the air inside became colder. The grass beneath my feet went from a vibrant green to a straw-yellow, the seagulls in the sky turned into falcons and the scent of the sea I loved so much was replaced by that of the steppe: sharp and cool with a touch of freshness to it. My daily simit was gone, replaced by baursak that coated my mouth in glistening oil instead sesame seeds while the ayran dribbling down my chin got replaced by shubat. It was a big change but a welcome one, especially since I managed to add a few more tongues to my library.
Twelve months later, the walls of my house stretched southwest. The shubat around my lips got replaced by pomegranate juice and the scent of the steppes went back to that of the sea with a hint of petrol this time. I couldn’t hear the falcons anymore, just planes and helicopters flying over skyscrapers. The simit became the baursak became the pirojki that burned my fingertips and coated my tongue in buttery, potato filling. I didn’t like this change that much, mainly because of those forcing themselves into my room, cutting my braids, and polluting my life with jokes of submarines and Genghis Khan. Despite this, the ever-burning flame I jumped over in spring made all my worries disappear.
A year went by. My house’s walls stretched so thin I feared a single touch would tear them down. It looked wonky now, stretched so far West the opposing wall looked minuscule in comparison. I looked at the floor, expecting something alien. The grass was a deep shade of green, wet and was topped with crunchy leaves with a permanent scent of petrichor mixed with sunlight and coffee. The air was warm and sticky with parrots ruling the skies while sagui dominated the trees, occasionally stealing my cookies during recess. For the first time, I saw the walls of my home take root and burrow themselves deep into the earth. I was terrified, I didn’t know when the next stretch would be.
For the next eighteen months, my home didn’t grow, certainly didn’t shrink and didn’t stretch any which way, it simply remained as it was for the next six years. I invited several people in, though the most important were Tay and Harvey. They knew my home like the back of their hands. Harvey had only ever been in my living room but could describe every room as if he’d lived there for years. Tay on the other hand scourged almost every single room. We sat by the coffee table in my living room for six years then chatted by the balcony for another three. He visited my bedroom for ten days and met the rest of my family too, it was amazing but probably the last time we’ll see each other for a while.
Tay’s house had a beautiful door, cedar with little ducks swimming in a pond and a boy sitting in a gazebo in the distance, admiring them with a paintbrush in his hand carved into the central plaque. The knob was made of bronze, round and golden with years of use with an orange light shining through the keyhole. It opened without my ever having to touch it and a distant gajar ka halwa smell pulled me in followed by memories of mango and cardamom on my tongue. The walls were a beautiful eggshell with pictures of Tay in chronological order plastered all over, from him in diapers up until adulthood, with his family, at Temple, a cheeky selfie with a flower crown… His house is warm and has begun to merge with mine, with a hallway in the middle from his bedroom to mine.
Harvey’s house was different. While I know it had a door, I can’t recall ever walking through it. In the moments where my house stood stagnant, his was one I could explore every inch of. I traced the parrots trapped in the yellow wallpaper and stroked the saxophone leaning against it, sat on his bed and stared at the light blue ceiling as he played Careless Whisper slightly off-rhythm. His house has grown since then and with it, the space I take up has diminished significantly. There are new people there, some guests while others have moved in. It feels like they don’t want me there, an array of hands finding their way to my back and pushing me closer and closer to the door. My fingers graze the knob tentatively but never wrap themselves around it. A hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me away from it yet my pinky still warms the steel.
Then my house changed again. Unexpectedly. The walls that were once paper-thin became see-through and I found a strange metal structure poking through my ceiling at the centre of it. I don’t really like this room, I’ll be completely honest. It smells of cigarette smoke, everybody looks the same and there’s no sun. So of course, when the time for spring cleaning came, I did my very best. I sprayed Lysol everywhere, scrubbed every inch and even cleaned my windows. A few weeks passed and a ray of sun peaked through my curtains for the first time since my house grew.
These rooms in my home have their problems. Some are too messy, others too clean, but I love them all the same. They’ve shaped the person I am and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I love my doorless home, I love that anyone can come and go as they please, that someone’ll offer them tea the second they take their shoes off with chatter filling every room. I hope my house stretches until the walls crumble to dust so that I may travel freely between the rooms, that I won’t have to wait several years to build up the courage to knock on doors and will just pounce.
© 2026 C. H. Gökdemir. All rights reserved.
Cece: Unfiltered 
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