Night With Pushkin

And so I return to nights of vodka and zakuski---- quiet and alone while everyone sleeps except the crow (and some voices awake and in drunken revelry downstairs), the roosters of dawn.

I think of those I had once spoken to at nights when I think of locked lovers, lost lovers, and I wonder every time if they think of me too at the same time thoughts of them visit me. One fleets, a young woman asking How come you don’t write erotica? And I shake my head, “I had already sung that need and it only takes once. And I know that what I can do with rhapsody I can do better with my body.”

My brows wrinkle as I try to remember how she had looked--- that young woman told by her lover that her lover had betrayed her once more while she was away, this time out of loneliness, both times with selfishness.

That young woman whose heart had already broken felt her heart break yet again. She told me after You were wrong to think that my heart could never be broken that way again. I had smiled, “Perhaps, but then it would not. It will not.”

And I had watched her face--- that cry from broken faith, that wail from a splintering heart, subdued as she shook, then breathed---- a slow exhale leaving her unburdened lover to return to her waiting guests and perhaps they saw a smile hissing.

I saw the falling into place of that already broken heart from that smile.

And now that young woman is awake, remembering unforgotten pictures, holding her heart locked. Tonight, she visits me and says It did not.

Then Pushkin quietly says through that young woman Who cares if this locked heart holds unforgotten pictures…

I smile at that young woman, “I do, dushenka, I do.”