Prompt: Russia has been missing his little princess Anastasia...
Once Upon a December
The Russian Perspective
I caught myself thinking again.
This is a dangerous pastime for one like myself, one who crystallizes into a looming mannequin of icy rock and plastic. When they see me like this, frozen and captivated as I relive my histories of blood and ash, I know they can see the faint red stains under my skin. They can see the hollow amethysts that offer me access to the present, how my glassy portals instead reflect the inactive, the feeling of loss in the engine of a film that composes the countless ages I’ve lived. They can see the tapered smile stitched seamlessly in place, uncanny as that of a doll who bears a close resemblance to humanity — a resemblance that, nevertheless, isn’t close enough.
These are a few of the innumerable things that make me unapproachable. However, I came to the conclusion that they are avoidable. And that is why, comrade, I aspire to follow my newest motto: “Why think when you can drink?”
My consumption of vodka removes me from this insurgence of dread poetry. It lets me ignore the etchings of my Fatherland, the invisible ink that has carved my past on my back. Only with alcohol am I truly in the present. It provides my eyes with the vitality needed to live in the moment: easing my vocal chords to allow them an occasional chuckle; easing my cheeks like tear-dampened clay so that the corners of my mouth can tilt upwards higher than before; and easing my gaze so that sometimes — once in a blue moon, maybe, if I’m lucky — someone will speak to me without a trace of fright.
Or, at least, my swimming mind is given the chance to harbor such a notion without reducing me into a fit of rusty laughter.
The trepidations of my past are best bottled, comrade. It’s for the good of us both. You, little voice in my head, and me. With this sip, or swig, or chug, I will once again be transformed. I stave off anxiety with the liquor’s flow. I stave off insanity in much the same way.
For instead of crying, I prefer to pretend that I’m drinking the tears of my victims.
They were the weak ones.
And I am not.
--
Yet it’s so hard to remove her: the purity of a child’s smile in a summertime garden, the buoyant airs of her youthful drama, and the sharp, naughty, playful wit that rolled so easily off her tongue
Strawberry blonde hair. Blue eyes. A tiny hand which loved to hold mine.
Her name was Anastasia, and she was my little princess. A gem of a girl, one who would sing and dance and want nothing more than to be a part of that which was bigger than herself. She loved me in the way only a child could; and I imagined in those moments with her, brief as they were, that she could thaw the ice around my winter heart. Occasionally I would call her “sunflower,” just to see her smile some more. More often than not, I would dance with her. She always loved to dance.
I can’t keep replaying those memories. A bit more of me cracks every time I recall the bloodshed, the red skies, the snapping transformation of me and my nation into a new, unstable secret. I crack over her loss, even now. I’m pebbles held together by school glue camouflaged as cement. The more I remember, the worse I become. The more my aura darkens with every passing moment of reflection. With every comment I could apply to her and myself.
I remembered her in the world meeting and suffered my fellow nations’ fleeing for it. As if they had never experienced loss like I have.
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