There must be poems that make sense in words. And not only in words, but also in rhythm, in harmony between lines, in sudden falls and rises of the heartbeat. If the verse talks about flower or flame I want to know it with my skin at the same time as I read it with my eyes. It is this fine line of talking in words and talking in senses. Not falling into a simple word sequence, not boarding on a bank of absurdity. Moving with the flow where the rhythm is the air.

I open my eyes and all I can see is a wing of a bird. The wing is huge, the bird must be even bigger. The wing takes all the sky. And then it breaks and millions of small birds fly over my head. I can’t hear the noise of their wings, but I can see them flying frenetically. The birds in the wind. Wings covering all the sky. All I can do is keep laying on my back and look up at the skies. I smile. Then I laugh. Seeing so many birds at once makes me laugh. I laugh hard. I can’t stop. The rest of my life I will be seeing only skies with millions of birds flying over my head. All the birds look the same, little brown dots moving with the wind and covering all the skies. I do not like brown.

I realize that I will never see a human person again. The air on the top of my face and hands is hard. It weights like the earth and the rye that are under my back. I can move my hands and feel resistance in any direction. The substance is weird, invisible and dense. I am glad it is resistant. It is not like water. You do not swim. You move from inside. The air passes through your body and moves you up, or right, or left. Anywhere. My back still guards the heat of the rye field. I am over it now.

The birds are circling in the skies. I do not feel closer to this brownish flock. The sky is everywhere. The sun. I put my right hand over my eyes and before it gets dark I notice that my hand looks like a giant wing against the light. The air flows inside of my body. I do not need to breath. I become part of the air. I smile…

And you smile too because you know there must be poems…

I found this book on my mom’s table. I started to read it this evening and did not stop till I finished the book. I navigated through two work calls and some emails, but my eyes were seeing only the book cover. Где Нет Зимы. Дина Сабитова.

I have read her books before. However this one was different. It made me feel very human and inhuman at the same time. This happens when I read something that touches me. You go through so many emotions and at the same time you withdraw yourself so much from those. Makes you feel in the middle of two powerful magnets. Two intense opposite currents. Just standing there alone.

Then I sat at the kitchen table while we were having dinner and thought how powerful our thoughts were. We can always rationalize and think about what we feel and why we feel it. Then emotions stop being a turmoil because by thinking we control them. Crying is a way of accepting our emotions. Thinking is another way to accept them. So I thought that it was good to feel what I felt. And it was good reading this book, even if things hurt me at times.

Last week my soon-to-be-ex-husband said that we both come from unhappy families and this is why our marriage was doomed from the beginning. And he added that both of our children will probably have unhappy relationships in the future. He said that my parents are unhappy because in my house we never show emotions openly. And I understand his point of view, it must look unhappy to him. I just see it differently.

So I thought that it was good to be reading this book, and feel sort of pain, and feel that I am human. Way too often I have to be tough, strong, silent, authoritative, take care of everything. When I am in this mode I forget about all the small details, I just have no time for that. I forget to look at the kids one extra time, to smile once more, to do something at random for myself, to listen to a song. Today I reminded myself to be softer. I closed the book halfway and took the kids outside and got them ice-cream. We sat on a bench in front of the ice-cream parlor and they ate their ice-cream, and I kept asking them questions about what they like, what they do, what they plan to do. And then I felt how precious having them was. I knew right there that I will make our home a happy one. There will be laughs, games, friends, books. Life gets very busy, but it is good even with all its businesses.

Past does not mean future. What really matters are the changes we go through.

When I finished the book it was 1am. And it started to rain. And I love when it rains in summer at nights. Thus I sat at my desk and wrote all this, because I did not feel sleepy at all.

I have realized lately that the places I miss are the ones I have not been to. There is a fancy restaurant with blue lamps on a side street in Barcelona. I have never been there, I always thought I would go there with somebody special and laugh a lot.

Then there is a fishermen village not far away from Tarragona. I wanted to go there to see the fishermen boats and to eat some fresh fish. There is the village of Cadaquez (where Dali lived), last time I have been there I was 12. I remember there was a serpentine road to the village, it rained heavily, and the fog was dense. This is the only time I saw my dad scared. He slowed the car down and said “Mamma mia!” in Russian. Then he stopped the car right on the road and we all waited for the rain to stop. Those were the only emotional words I’ve ever heard from my dad. The rest of my life I know him as a very rational man, solid as a rock; He speaks with an even voice, he never gets angry, he works a lot, and he likes to play cars and planes with my son.

I miss the two towns in Norway that I never got to visit: Bodø and Tromsø. Both are around the arctic circle. I thought I would live there for some months, work remotely, and see the snow fall behind the windows. The way you feel the relationship between the nature and yourself in those places must be entirely different; An intense mix of beauty and respect.

I miss people I did not get to know quite well. It is a queer sensation of missing somebody you do not know.

I can’t say I miss Barcelona. I try to imagine that I will miss these cafes, these streets, this full moon that I am seeing right now sitting on the atico of my parents. The moon is big and yellow. Strangely enough I have no feelings towards all this. I do not miss the town of Besalu that we visited yesterday.   I do not miss the roads that we walked in the past years. The roads were beautiful, the walk was worth it, but the places remain just sceneries.

I miss the poems that I did not find. When I am tired I like to read poetry, sometimes looking for a particular author, sometimes choosing the verses randomly. Lately I have not found anything that would make me stop and want to read it over and over again. Something that I could read like I breath.

My son still likes to put his fingers in my hair and mess with it. He still does it, so I do not miss that. What I really miss is laughing a lot, lightheartedly. This desire to laugh is the little motor that makes me go forward (may be even fly forward), the true motivation behind everything I do.