Coming Home

For my next trick I’ll show a picture of Not the Golden Gate Bridge.

On Sunday afternoon I landed in Gothenburg, Sweden – the town where I was born almost twenty-six years ago, the town where I grew up, the town which was my world until the age of nineteen. As the plane got closer and closer to my hometown’s airport – located way outside of town in the middle of the woods for no apparent reason save ‘just ‘cause’ – it occurred to me that I was about to touch down in something that looked like Finland. Not that I have anything against Finland – it is merely the metaphor of choice here – on a single little airstrip next to a tiny provincial airport surrounded by endless amounts of dark green pine trees interrupted only by countless dark blue lakes and a few red houses sitting here and there on their shores. Some fifteen hours prior to this, I had flown out of San Francisco and looked down at East Bay and searched for Berkeley’s phallic symbol among the myriad of brightly colored houses and broad highways and those glittering cars and suddenly felt my heart caving in to what I had been resisting throughout this year – I guess sometimes you have to admit to having been wrong all along – for what I felt when flying over Berkeley was what I used to feel when flying out of Russia. Somehow I’m attached to the soil of California now; just like I used to sense the same kind of physical linkage with the Russian land. The sensation doesn’t have a name yet – yet it is already with me now. Somehow I did manage to put down roots in northern California; I feel myself invested in the state as such – from now on there is something at stake in its tradition and values and way of life also for me. Who would’ve known, considering that girl who cried outside Dwinelle last August wondering what the hell she’d inflicted upon her life? But what about Gothenburg, then? On Monday, I spent some time alone with my hometown after having turned in the Russian visa application [my time at the consulate was so pleasant that I no longer doubt coming back to Russia will also be ‘coming home’]; I walked the downtown streets, I sat by the water, I soaked up the sun and somehow the one thought that kept reoccurring in my mind was this used to be my world. It isn’t anymore. My horizons are different. It hasn’t changed; I have. Once I put down my signature together with Critical Companion on the contract for our apartment in Berkeley last week, it was as if I openly for the first time admitted to myself this is where I live.

*

“I don’t think I’ll ever get over you”

If my life were a 90’s sitcom

now is the season finale

now is the finally when you

instead of hugging me twice –

present in the line of farewells past and future –

exchange the last embrace

for our first kiss.

The audience applauds and what a roar…

If my life were a romantic comedy

this is the moment I press ‘forward’

and let “Wild World” sound

as five years of life pass under ‘mute’

where you and I’d cross paths

over and over and time and again

“I’ll always remember you as a child, girl”

seems to be written on your lips

I’d raise my glass at you from the stage

“Here’s looking at you, kid”…

If my life were a 19^th century novel

I’m destined to be the Tatiana

to your Bezukhov every time

and when you’re Ongein

then I’m Sonya.

If you’d kneel down before me –

just like Raskolnikov did –

I’d become Nora and my life

a modernist play…

Save we’d never get to me leaving

as we’ve never been anywhere

or anything at all

you never asked me to stay –

did you know I never got over you?

If my life were nothing but mine

where I stand alone –

nothing but moonlight behind

my own shadow ahead –

somehow it seems clear

here in the darkness

I’ll never be good enough for you.

You’ll never lean in for that kiss,

you’ll only smile at me in that crowd,

as your eyes always appear to be whispering:

“Now is not the time, Natasha”…

Standing here alone in the night

knowing very well you’ll never ever…

Have you heard I’m not over you?

Don’t I know I’ll never be yours,

I won’t become the woman you hold,

she who hears those words…?

Why do I allow myself the illusion,

a make believe world of intimacy

with every man I sleep?

Knowing I’ll wake up in the morning

finding one thing and one thing only –

none of them even come close…

It doesn’t make sense – why should it?

Wishing somehow you’d find me here

knowing you’d never come after me

realizing I’ll never be what you want

never the kind of woman you’d hold

and say the words and maybe even…

Does it show I can’t get over you?

Can you tell I’ll always…?

Is it obvious I still hope you…?

Before my life becomes an Italian opera

I’ll smoke one last cigarette

call up somebody else

find refuge in similar arms

search for catharsis in lips

whose words fall like rain –

does it matter I never got over you?

I’ll stay outside your door

until you ask me to go home –

even if it pours, is dark, gets cold.

Does it hurt to know I’ll never –

not now not later not ever –

earn you, deserve you, be worthy of…?

If my life were a fairytale

you’d be the prince to my poor farmer’s daughter.

If my life were a country song

you’d become my one true love only in the last verse.

If my life were a Bildungsroman

you’d seal my fate with a ring on the last page…

Yet this is none of the above –

in the real narrative I am the girl who spent carelessly

all she ever had and even what she stole

thinking there could never come a day

when someone would walk into her life –

someone worth saving something for…

If only the tiniest piece,

if only one pinkie on my already small hands –

then I’d have something to offer you.