(G)loss
Tear after tear, wound after wound.
My life leaks away like water from a tap.
It’ll end with the drop of the last day.
It’ll come back with the pure power of the rain.
Dolphin. Tap
One day we met and later
we sought one another out on other days. And we’d
found–by the screams louder than everybody else’s.
Then there was a walk and I left my footprints
on the snow, on the cobbles, on the poles, on the streetlights,
and you and your sisters watched. There were
three of you and together we were Chekhov and his play.
Then we parted our ways to meet again,
but this time with consciousness. And to count time–
tear after tear, wound after wound,
minute after minute. We were getting closer.
We met to banish undead from the streets
and then walked the same streets down.
We stayed all alone. With no prying eyes
got married and multiple obstacles
seemed to us just a “cost-of-production.”
And we sat down in our tiny room
that was a bedroom and a kitchen to us.
But once you now notice how so long
my life leaks away like water from a tap
and for us it gets too cramped. We read to each other
in hopes to lose ourselves; you talked about politics
and I did on Marx and we tried to find
the common ground. We got our kids;
I started to cover you from the cold with my coat
less and less. Then you remembered your diploma from the US
and decided to come back there, settle in Palo Alto.
I don’t cause a trouble and stay alone with the kids.
You know that even if this dream doesn’t come true
it’ll end with the drop of the last day,
not sooner or later. From California we communicate
over the Internet and to you the howls
of snow and wind are something unheard of–it all reminds
a quite air alert. Finally, you come back
disappointed and together we belatedly
raise our kids hoping to outrace the time.
We teach our kids the words but not their meanings so that
afterwards they would not judge us for our past transgressions but for future ones. And once
they’re grown we file for divorce and bet on our life, on the fact that
it’ll come back with the pure power of the rain.
Sometime in 2021
Berlin
Anton Lushankin is a (visual) poet, writer, playwright, and translator, born in Kyiv and, since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, resides in his hometown. His work appeared in multiple publications including TAB Journal, orangepeel, Cream City Review, Lenticular Lit, and Teiresian. He has too many ideas to really be able to manage them properly, but currently he’s finishing M.Sc. in Architecture, while working on a closet musical DIG!!! LAZARUS DIG!!! (based on the eponymous album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), a memoir-in-essays about the Russo-Ukrainian War, and a multitude of short stories. He’s on Instagram.
BACK TO ISSUE