Poem: Pieces of My Soul

[ladytauriel]

Before I went to Russia last summer, I was pumped; I was excited, excited excited; nothing could be a bummer. I haven't been in four years.

It's going to be so great: pies, pies, hanging out with my grandmother, more pies, chocolate, time to get my passport, showing it to my friends and saying that during the National Anthem I might not even have to stand.

The smell of smoke at the airport, I remember. When I'm in the United States, it reminds me of the entrances of Russian supermarkets, where at least five people smoke at a time.

I remember, I don't mind, the bad weather. Love it, actually, it's just so cheesy. Сыро - moist, сыр - cheese. It's an invading smell to the senses, but one I welcome with the gratitude of finally being in the home of so many ballet dancers.

"Why do you like it in Russia, Kristina?"

A question I so easily knew the answer to for the majority of my life; it never gave me any strife.

Why do I like Russia? Why do I like Russia? It's the best place ever, so much better than the culture-lacking, lip-smacking, dumb joke-cracking America.

My official place of residence is a two-room flat, and I would be okay with that, but it's also the official place of residence of my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, and my alcoholic grandfather, who gets drunk every night because, because he's divorced from his wife. She doesn't love him, doesn't love their life, only married him because her mother wanted her to stop going out alone at night.

My grandmother is a really sweet lady, who worked at a factory for fifteen years, lugging around bags of flour, inhaling poisonous fumes to the point that disease has become a part of her, the same way thought of impending death comes to her every hour, the same way a limp too serious for fifty nine has become her walking.

It was one month into a surprisingly boring summer when I was celebrating the legalization of gay marriage rights in California, and my aunt, my psychoanalyzing, man-hunting, America-appreciating, cat-loving, broke aunt, says, "Kristina, how can it not be disgusting for you that they fuck each other's asses?"

Thank God that at least schools started to promote tolerance - what a concept it is, acceptance! Except that my godfather starts yelling about how he doesn't want his son to become gay.

There are ages of Russian literature that grow in my heart, guiding me in the dark that life can be.

Lermontov singing of his sorrows until his death at twenty seven. Dostoevsky throwing the light of God onto the perpetual darkness of Russian life that keeps going in circles: lust, alcoholism, divorce, alcoholism, domestic abuse, alcoholism, alcoholism.

Tolstoy outlining the despair in forbidden love.

Gorkiy being a revolutionary against the autocracy before the Soviet government was like, "Oo! Propaganda!" and pushed him over to the category of Bolshevik revolutionary authors, who were never actually Bolshevik revolutionaries!

And Pushkin, dear, dear Pushkin, who cradles every Russian girl's heart with the love story of the gloomy Tatyana and the distant Onegin, who gently holds her heart before letting it shatter as dramatically as it does in real life.

Maybe Tatyana and Onegin have a connection to the fact that men in Russia are afraid to get married, living and feeding off of the woman’s family in their two-roomed flat until he doesn't want to anymore, instead.

Maybe Anna Karenina is a reflection of the fact that every generation of women in my family, except for my mother and I, is entrapped in a drama that she herself created by marrying an alcoholic. Those aren't hard to come across.

But there is no Sonya and Raskolnikov in the way no one ever learns their lessons through their punishment.

"Why do you like Russia, Kristina? It's so sexist, homophobic, transphobic, conservative, border-disrespecting, Putinist, America-phobic, communist, Ukraine-disrespecting-" alright, alright, I hate it, I hate it!

Mom, I hate it. I hate Russia. Russia is a terrible place. Mom, aren't you so glad that you overcame your fears of the unknown and followed your husband to the United States?

Here, people don't get blamed for their culture being "oppressive" to the rest of the world, even though English is the most widely-spoken language.

The Russian language is a living, breathing entity that rolls off the tongue like hard, bitter, dark chocolate that no one really likes except those who learn to appreciate the taste. It's not something that can suddenly be shut out of non-Russian countries just because Russian entities want to it to be.

I don't like Putin as much as the next member of the Russian opposition, but then I see you laughing at Russia for hoarding buffer countries.

Suddenly, I see red behind my eyelids, which is as dark as the rivers of blood that have run through the Neva and Moscow river, when twenty million people died after being thrown onto the battlefields like a sack of potatoes, whose lack during the war made children starve and women cry; when seven million were killed in the concentration camps and millions more in enemy fire.

Why do I like Russia? Why, mom, dad, friends, is my political opinion altered by the bitterness I feel towards the extreme hatred emitting from almost everyone I know?

When the dirty nine-floored buildings that hold the memories of when hanging carpets on walls was fashionable, because jeans and bright coats weren't, fall down around my heart and shatter my oblivion, what's left is the poetry I've memorized, the classical novels I've read, the papers I've written, the classes I've attended, the children's books that decorate my little sister's book shelves.

When the tsar that stomps around the streets of my country with the appearance of an autocracy, a communist government, and a "democratic" president faces away, taking with him the shackles that hold down the Russian people from freedom, what remains are thousands of miles of green fields and pine trees, cloudy skies, warm lakes, and the best soups you can eat out of real mushrooms that you pick in the forests and fish that you catch in the streams.

When the problematic anti-gay laws and anti-women institutions fall, and when Russian culture transforms from a threat to a beauty that is as unique as in any other culture, what is left are pieces of soul scattered around me like the remnants of the waning dinner party, which I pick up and hold in my hand with soft sigh, letting the smell of wine and leftover cake remind me of home.