


Forget-Me-Not, I sent you this story in Russian to your e-mail!
Well, guys, judge! I’m a little bit afraid of what you’ll say…

******MY SPRING 2002*****
Dying winter crawls slowly on the streets, catching with her thin decrepit hands on crying drain-pipers, on wrinkles-cracks in the asphalt and passers-byes’ legs. Snow which was put too much salt in during long months becomes black and grey and subsides down and down going away into the ground under blowing of solar beams. It uncovers empty tins and chip wrappings and miserable attempts of earth to born a kind of grass here in downtown. Old women that look like silent gray crows wander in backyards picking up empty beer bottles. Buildings are smeared up to their knees with dirty, mud is slippery, cats are screaming wild… It’s my nightmare.
Thin ice climbs down my window like fusilladed man climbs down the wall. Houses try to open their eyes and look outside. There’s nothing there except colorless spring delirium. Naked trees look like blind old men that lustfully fumble with their bony hands in the sky. Possessed sun scorches the roofs flinging down faggots of yellow beams. I don’t know whom does it revenge upon… Urban flower-beds won’t bloom soon. I hate it.
Life, dirt and stench are everywhere. Migrant birds from nowhere, screaming flocks of swallows fly to my town, although it’s too early, snow hasn’t come off. Anyway there are too many cadgers – doves, I cannot see them anymore… Crows burrow in garbage squandering trash and dirt to the sides. My neighbor is so glad that this madness has come; he stays on his balcony and smokes as a locomotive smiling with his toothless mouth during whole days. When days are warm he walks in the backyard with similar swearing men. In the evenings drunk companies took their place, and then they swear louder, and scuffle, and break bottles under my window, and bawl songs all nights through…
… at dawn shabby winter died and flowed down with muddy water drops from my window-sill. I’m looking out my window. My town is not simply empty, it’s dead like a stone. Just possessed swallows are rushing around above the backyard screaming like hell. These wild screams are like a knife that unripes this strident clinking silence around me. It’s too stifling in my house. I bungle myself in an old checkered scarf, and take jacket, and leave home. Streets have sloppy and confused view, they cannot understand what’s happened. It’s just spring has come.
This everlasting slush that immersed pavements cannot melt to the end. Town sinks in salt soup which is flavoured with sand and trash. Every street became a dirty river that idly crawls between stone shores-borders. Iron hatches are unable to manage with these muddy streams and choke with agonizing wheeze. Possessed of noxious spring air, vermin rushes around me on the pavements, whistling and jumping. For some reason nobody except me sees them. Passing-byes go by and don’t notice imps that keeps on starting a fight, swearing and knock with their emaciated legs on sweaty asphalt, laughing thinly and shrilly. I dash aside them scared but passing-bys follows with their eyes to me.
…the embankment is empty. I toil myself wearily along the pavement feeling like plague air touches me with its dead breath. I feel vertigo. Pale skin guy with scared insane eyes stands near the cast-iron fence and holds on to it. He seems to see the same. So I’m not insane. It’s just spring has come.
Bacchanalia continues. Something horrible and black is above the river and buildings… Ancient churches have shriveled and their walls became darker. Trees are ready to pull up their roots from the ground to save themselves from spring. It’s impossible to raise look to the dirty clouds that seems to be sickly scabs on the shrill-blue sky. I wish to run away from here but I cannot show to spring that lied doggo behind every stone and in every gateway how much I’m scared. So I walk slowly along the alley and hide my eyes, otherwise it will guess. It won’t catch me with its iron hands! I know it.
I wander on possessed town all the day until cold twilight comes down from the sky driving away shaking passing-byes. Wet air flows to my collar and thrust its cold hands in my sleeves. My fingers are cold and don’t obey to me when I try to bungle myself in lengthy scarf and lap over my jacket. Town looks like a mad who pretends to be still and obedient but there’s concealed threat in its eyes, and its hands are ready to seize my neck in a death grip.
It’s disaster…
Darkness bullies and plays hide-and-seek with me. On purpose she hides figures of belated passing-byes behind gray veil of haze that crawls towards me from gateways. I gaze into dusk faces of strangers trying to see familiar features but beforehand I know that I’ll never see them again. But I still go and gaze… This hope isn’t from mind but from the deep of my soul… Never again…
Cold and stifle night thrust its weight on me fast and implacable like a wave of panic attack. It’s like running from something in a dream but feels that your foot don’t move as immersed into water. I wipe my forehead and try to hit to a keyhole with my key. I step over threshold of my flat but even my own walls are unable to save me from spring. It obstinately leaks through small chinks of window frames and crawls under the door… It seems that I begin to fall into panic and pull away a button trying to come unbuttoned. I try to restrain my fear and go to my room didn’t take off my shoes. I need to sew this button, I need to do something not to become insane…
I rise to a tiptoe to take a casket with sewing needles and cottons from the highest shelf. I feel vertigo and thousand of crazy pixels are jumping towards my eyes like recently thousand of deuces jumped on pavements… I need to sew this button. I open the casket…
… it’s the last straw!.. Oh my god, what for?.. I climb down my sofa hiding my face in palms, and tears are blowing me up… Cuff links lie above reels of thread, needle banks and scissors.
His cuff links.
**********