I Will Die in a Foreign Land

What is the act of love if not bold? As the world comes apart, nothing to lose- What is love if not a promise to go on?

Loss, when it occurs, has memory stronger than the mind, stronger than visual recollection patterned in the brain. It’s something the flesh knows, the muscles know, like a dancer reciting a step done hundreds of times, like a musician playing a song or a scale after decades without practice. It’s something the body knows, something the body is aware of while the mind adapts, responds, reacts.

Slava’s mother tried to show her how to learn patience. Slava’s mother tried to teach her modesty, and good traditional values. She tried to teach Slava embroidery and dressmaking. Slava learned how to hold a needle, looping the thread through the eye without needing to use her tongue or her teeth. Slava’s mother tried to appear good. She tried to make it all look right. She tried to love her husband, death do them part. Scarf over her long hair, Slava’s mother made an offering in church and prayed. She made an offering to God. Later, she sold her daughter to the devil.

When we shoot, we kill a neighbor. When we shoot, we kill ourselves. In Ukraine, the umbilical cord becomes the noose.

Slava wants to reach for her hand, but it's Dascha who reaches first, across the table. The warmth of her palm, her lithe fingers tangled with her own, Slava's breath tightens in her chest, her eyes sting, and Dascha whispers to her, "Are you okay?" Her whole heart open, Slava's courage renews.

Misha burns his tongue on the tea. Katya burns her tongue on the soup. Katya smiles at Misha, unsure why. Misha smiles back, unsure how.

It was her mother who would tell her, 'it was your father who built the crib before you ever arrived'. It is the mother, though, who bleeds.

The old teacher went back to the piano, and as he played, he taught me that the Hebrews believed in the harmony of the spheres—the planets analogous to musical pitches, spaced in just the same way as ratios to musical intervals in tone. Seven planets, seven tones.

My mother was the one with the gift. She had a soft voice that warbled like a bird, but it was my father who wanted us to learn music. We learned the arts, my father said, to be civilized people because the world was at times a most uncivilized place. I often forgot he survived the war.