by Irina Tall (Novikova)
Sometimes snow covers our sorrows, sometimes it becomes a salvation for us and, like a wonderful elephant, leads us out of our own desert.
“Why didn’t you want to open your eyes then?”
“I didn’t want to feel anything .. I wanted to be myself and not perceive the world that surrounded me…”
Her feathers stirred a little in the wind.
And suddenly the world fell into the dark span of the building… And what could happen there?
Her eyes became two slits, two small lightning bolts in her fair face. The black hair was confused and took on the shape of a dish in which a bird can make a nest.
She no longer wanted to write, she lay on a blue-red bedspread cut through with white stripes like a knife, and looked at the yellowish screen.
She began to have frequent nightmares where she was behind something black and vast, behind something that might not be part of her, but was absorbing her. And today she dreamed of a unicorn, he walked on gray slabs with dark slots, smooth like sown meadows in China.
And she thought that nothing could be eternal, something that is different.
There was a dove, also white, the sun rose and it melted, because it was made of snow. And during the day, only a small puddle remained from it.
And then she walked up the stairs, up the twisted loop of the flight, and all the time looked up, she wanted to find wings and could not.
She opened her eyes, the dream left her … But she so wanted to draw a unicorn, paint it in bright colors, so that it would take on the color of the bright rays of the sun, she sighed and the dream embraced her again, became part of her and she could do nothing more. She sailed for a long time in a blue boat that looked like night, her hands were transparent, and the dark arrow of the oar moved as if by itself, drawn only by the current in the ocean.
A blue bird with a red head flew up to her, sat on the edge of her boat and sang a wondrous, wonderful song, small red flashes began to fly out of her throat, and soon the whole world was on fire with her song.
The oar swayed in her invisible hands and she wanted to put out the fire that she saw.
“Don’t swim there .. don’t swim ..” – the voice repeated to her, he beckoned her back.