By Dmitry Blizniuk
Your name is a splinter,
an ice-breaker
a loop of pearly fog.
Your nineteen are kill notches
scratched with an accurate slope
on a buttstock,
a perfect shooting range for Cupid.
I’m slightly in love with you.
The timid grace of a kitten
playing in the grass.
Small ears like two pieces of chewing gum.
Your nose has a bump on the bridge, like Cleopatra’s.
Like an apricot pit got stuck in the spout of a kettle.
My heart used to sink
when you, in the morning,
still ephemeral, not fully incarnated yet,
pulled your thin skin on,
starting from your ankles,
adjusted the elastic belt of the pantyhose,
like a meridian—
an inhabited girl-planet.
I hugged you
displaced, warped;
I dived into a mirror of absurd,
took a shower of refreshing nonsense,
getting brighter.
Pity, I don’t know where you are now.
You see, we only live once;
by pure chance our hearts collide,
and break like Christmas baubles.
We won’t ever see each other again
in this universe.
I left you at the window,
and winter light laid out a garden on your shoulders.
Turning a random corner,
I left the Euclidean street.
I’m not there,
I don’t exist anymore.
And you’re still standing at the window
like Madonna in a kitchen icon,
adding the days you have lived
to the spinal column of January.
You place heavy silver coins
On the frozen eyelids of the dead wasteland.
The columns of coins are already tall.
They’re going to collapse any moment
on the puddles
covered with thin papery ice…
