By Stella Fridman Hayes.
I was one with the cold / Moscow imparted, an import
from the old Soviet days / A mixture of mud & snow
on my western-brand boots, / as deep as my animus
after all these human years / loneliness inexpressible
since we left without him / The hotel kept my passport
at the front desk. I wasn’t / a flight risk, there, as a tourist.
In love with the man I was there with—his blush, his smell
Commingled with mine, from the night together into morning.
Splitting a shy moon into parts / married / not married.
I spent the day in our room / reading, waiting for him.
Through the crack in the window, snow started to accumulate
On the windowsill. / I wanted to get warm, I took the elevator
to the lobby. Ordered black tea / with lemon. It was just the two
of us, a tycoon du jour, at the bar / in a German-manufactured
suit, an ironed handkerchief inside a breast pocket / He must have
slid off the rose-gold wedding ring / his right ring finger freed.
His wife used to this when / he would come home. His wife
who darns his socks / who washes by hand his underwear
that dries on a short clothesline in / the post-communal
bathroom. His family / descendants of Bolsheviks. As we
locked eyes, he sparkled like / the disco ball affixed to the
ceiling in the middle of the bar / The mirrors, luminous
celestial bodies / emitting & capturing light with each rotation.
He smacked, rearranged his lips on the vodka / shot as cold
as snow crushed underfoot / Outside, a weather revolution.
His perverse / bristling beauty. A birch forest / between us.
A grotto for Mother Russia’s beatific love / for her people.
Inside, a closed ideology. I sat there locked / waiting for
something—only Moscow could teach me / Her in 1917.
Murderous, revolutionary. Her imperial seat of government.
(The Duma.) Her, post-revolutionary / where the regime’s
politicians (thought up) legislative deviations / He looked
like a technocrat, descending into / middle age without a fight.
Like Anna Karenina’s husband / Reliably unimaginative.
With more money than he should / have gotten away with
stealing from the people. Vodka / sweat / swallowing up
his top lip. He looked / like he was drowning—
I could have followed him to his / room after he sent a note
in Russian with the waiter / One vodka shot & beluga
like rare black diamonds / spinning in the crystal dish
a small glass spoon upright / I could have allowed him
to give me pleasure / the Russian kind. Abundant.
Firm as a kulak—I could have whispered obscenities
in his ear, a turn-on I’m sure / he couldn’t have imagined
from a woman. I could have / taken $1,000 he offered
for the night. The note said—whatever it costs to have me,
he’d pay. I could have made / him crawl on all fours.
For the surveillance crew / listening in on the night.
I could have hurt him / I could have cried in his chest.
A universal language. I learned / & relearned. I could do
it all over again with or / without. Human matters.
In whispered desperation / When I saw the man
I loved. His lapis-lazuli eyes / Our night on his lips.
Our night turned on its head / Our feral love.
How could anyone compete / My living ruin.
Like cells in division / In friction. In one person
diving into another, like a blade / falling on a tree
in a forest. Papa, he could have admired you
stepping into your kind of valediction. He would
be you. How could he compete?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stella Fridman Hayes is the author of two poetry collections, Father Elegies (What Books Press) and One Strange Country (What Books Press). She grew up in Brovary, a suburb outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Chicago, and Los Angeles. She earned an MFA in creative writing from NYU, where she taught in the undergraduate creative writing program and served as assistant fiction editor and poetry editor of Washington Square Review. Her work has appeared in Image, The Recluse, Four Way Review, and Stanford University Press, among others. The story ‘Luda, The Girl Who Was My Best Friend’ is forthcoming in Best Microfiction 2025. Hayes is a contributing editor at Tupelo Quarterly. Visit her at stellahayes.com.
