Yalta

The birds are hungry today. Little brown birds, they come to the feeder I make from an old can, tapped with nails to make holes to let the seed out. In some places nails are still there for them to perch on, but I wince at their naked scaly little feet gripping the iron nails in the subzero temperature. The sunrise makes the snow and ice go pale sherbet: peach, orange, pink. The birds are welcome company and tell me, life abounds. Life, even in the sharp quiet, flats of snow radiating forever in each direction from this little wood cabin. One hundred miles to Yakutsk, many more to anywhere.

Anatoly shoulders open the thin door, comes in from training. His eyelashes are frozen and his small blue eyes are burned bright red and streaming. I unwrap his woolens in front of the fire, snow and ice in the creases not melting as they hit the floor. Survivable inside, but not warm. I slap my hands together and rub fast. I lay him, face down, on the pallet bed, his pale rear and enormous tree-trunk thighs bulging up at me. Not sexual though. Its not that way for us. I pour a stream of brown horse liniment over his skin, and for such a big man he gives a shudder at the sensation anyway. I rub and rub, fast and light, working the oils into his skin. The skin goes bright red as his capillaries dilate, little steam trails drift up from his blood releasing its heat. Anatoly sighs, but no words. Anatoly is mute, as long as I've known him. By choice or birth I don't know.

Today we leave. We walk, miles and miles, carrying in small bundles all we own. Timing is precious to make sure we come to the next cabin before sundown, and the plunging temperatures. We sleep each night on a different pallet, spooned together, but not sexual. Just for warmth, to survive. If I find a can, and a nail, I bang it and put a little from my seed bag in, hang it by a window or a wall crack for watching. Sometimes the birds find it and come, sometimes they do not. Anatoly goes out for training, simply muscling for two, three hours through the waist-deep snow. Tree-trunk thighs result. The birds are my company while he is out. I have only necessities, what I can carry. Same for Anatoly. Except: me seed for my birds, Anatoly liniment to ease his pains. Even with survival all the time, we make a little room for something more than that.

He hopes for a chance to take this strength, make something of it. Learn a sport, then compete. Make money. A living. I hope for a place to hang a feeder and know the birds. I don't know what kind of birds they are, anywhere we go. Sometime, maybe, we will be in one place. I will learn their bird names, maybe even recognize a certain personal bird, day to the next day. We each have our hope, Anatoly and me. Hopes keep us together, living.

Ten miles each day. Maybe a week then, south and east, to Yakutsk. If the river is flowing, maybe more than ten miles a day. Maybe a month to Yalta. Then, maybe, a little money somehow. We leave the overland route and go over the Black Sea. Overland again, but warmer. No snows. Anatoly dragging heavy things to build his legs now, us still with my birds, his liniments. Then Ankara, and pears, and pale honey, and muscat grapes. Sweet things on our tongues, sliding down our throats. Maybe Anatoly makes a sound of pleasure, and I am there to hear it. Maybe I get Anatoly a fine-boned Angora cat, silky white, a chimera with one blue eye and one amber eye. Soft under Anatoly's rough meat fingers, so he learns stroking, along with muscling.

I think of this in the cold and dark, Anatoly warm and hulking around me. Bringing ourselves to all those Ankara ruins, Byzantine, Roman, Hittite, all mixed together. Taking our own ruin and mixing it in too. Who knows what then. What all we can make of it. I am hoping for it, in the dark, all the birds pressed breast to breast and sleeping in the dark trees, stars very far away and brilliant white, millions, scattered everywhere and over us, me and Anatoly, asleep, and then dreaming.

Terminology, Slogans: Higher Power, Keep it Simple

"Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all."

Khalil Gibran

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

Mother Teresa

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On the way home, I take off
a pink mitten, and push
scan, and for awhile
I drive and scan. Then,
I settle on something classical:
oboe, strings, solo flute
lyrics for the swelling hills
covered in a blazing white slab of
February snow, undulating unbroken
and soft
as I drive by. My phone rings
twice when you call, and I
pull the car over onto
the shoulder of the road
to better be able
to talk to you. I close my eyes
and I listen to your voice:
the timbre of the air you breathe
vibrating through your vocal folds, your
particular phonation.
I can't name them,
but I know them by heart,
even with my eyes closed: your voice's
range and weight, your most usual
breaks, and lifts -
I don't say that much. I mostly listen. I turn down
the radio, and I close my eyes. I hear
your words,
I know
your voice,
I can see
the air you breathe
pouring in, and then
lifting through,
and then sighing out of you. These days
this is mostly
how I talk to you.

Psalm 30:5

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: 
weeping may endure for a night, but 

joy cometh in the morning.

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I think about quitting
Facebook, altogether:

maybe I don't want to know. I don't want to know, but
then I look

I can't seem to help but look

I don't like how that feels about me, to me. Looking

and snooping around

and, possibly, not having anything better to do. Is your Macintosh

a $3000-dollar

Facebook machine? I think about putting up
a timely quote
a smart remark
something sincere
genuine. It all plays badly, in preview. I think about
chiming in
but I don't like the tone, mine, or anyone else's. So I just say,
I like it

and then leave.

But I'll be back
sooner than I want to
sooner, and more often, than I'll admit
and I know it already
unfortunately

I want to quit this tired and kind of dirty thing
I want to be better

but we're not yet done hooking up.

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Snow comes, swirling in the coming dark outside
I turn to watch it, framed by plate-glass windows, while
a good-looking young man makes my espresso drink, and
the girl he works with, who has a famous-sounding voice
that I can't place
turns to watch it too, and in the absence
of any other customers
and the abrupt quiet of the shop, from the Christmas
CD ending, and the hissing steam of the
espresso machine and the refrigeration case cycling off,
it feels as if someone had turned everything off for the night, the whole town,
and left us there, forgotten
without any smiling banter to define our
snowy-evening, holiday-time, shopkeeper and patron relationship -
we look at each other, a little uneasily,
like meeting in the morning in the kitchen, in daylight, finding a glass of water
after a one-night stand
well, hello, how are you -

the real me, and the real you -

we all laugh, a little awkwardly,
and the good-looking young man starts the music back up
and the girl begins to re-arrange the counter, and rinse things out in the sink, and
I remember my bags, and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and push the wooden door open -

I step down onto the brick sidewalk, already covered
in a light layer of snow, and the wind
blows snowflakes down into my bags, and straight into my face and eyes, and also
down into my collar, making
cold little kisses on my neck -
I walk away from the shop, and
into the intimate darkness.

Card #45

Two more children, foster, or adopted. A little older, like 5 or 7 or 9 or 11 years old, maybe some medical issues. A girl, named Liberty. Another girl, or maybe a boy, I don't know, and I don't know the name. College, paid for, for all four kids. Little bit bigger house just so each kid has their own room. Or our house with enough of an addition to achieve that.

School. An accelerated program. A nursing degree. To complement the social work and public health practice. I could get in 30 years of public health care. Maybe some international work for a few years, with Matt, with him doing sanitation systems, me the basic health care and education, in someplace that really needs it, before we're too old.

That's what I would do with my million.