I flinch from a phone call from strangers or a close friend.
Room surrounded by cohorts of buildings and stores as its slaves.
It's been a year since my father left
The chain-mail he left behind still decorating the living room.
Sad. Impossible to reverse broken plates;
Too late when my feet start bleeding from unnoticed shreds.
“You cannot escape from the past. You forget your old man.
Least fragile object you have oozing my breath.
I cast a shadow across your future, kid. By the way,
It was not intended to be a holiday gift.”
Mother switched skirt for pants;
Keeps me from rifting and getting influenced by the gangs
In the city that made rivers bend,
All that's left for me doing is devaluating the bed.
“Skull is the weakest bone when you twelve,”
She said. Honestly, it was not easy to question.
School flooded with wannabe gangbangers
What's left for me was being hardly visible at the team games.
Lines slowly leaking into depressing nostalgia
My story takes place in Russia
Where passages to the peace
Texturized as collages of dirt and fisting at gunfights.
But I was privileged not to get answers when asked
What all this “not staying alone” was about,
Family by my side.
When curiosity intersects with the chance
Like any legend starts with a sword thrown cross the table
The story of how I took the knife for the first time
Starts with a chain-mail.
***
One night
One more evening of canceled plans
I was alone through the night
No more parties in granny’s house.
That was the day of my life,
First win as a diplomat
In calendar that date was typed in roman
As it was historic.
The knock brought me back to the world.
Thunder of kicks penetrating my ears,
Fear crips in, adrenaline rush.
Sweaty armpits.
Shaky hands drop the remote. What a marvelous night.
On the tips of my toes, I slowly march to the doorstep
The knocking grows on me, ‘how do the neighbors
Can tolerate screams at midnight?’
Still, I was the one terrorized,
Guess minding their precious business.
Guess the one thing in common with NY.
“We take what belongs to us!
We know you are still here!
We taking the metal or blood!
You feel me?”
Less than a meter apart.
Chair to enhance the view.
My heart pumping much harder now
Not scared of falling, cause I am focused not to.
And through the peephole I see
Two men perfectly fit the occasion.
Zealously catching the air with twisted bodies
In shape of a pair of pincers.
“We can hear your smell, coward!
You knew what you signed up for!
Give us back the chain-mail, pussy!
We taking the metal, or blood, or your kid too!”
It turned personal. It was destined to happen.
The moment of truth, I was taught to be cute and silent.
The reality though requires to be a defender.
Unconsciously I was waiting for this moment forever.
Mother said, never play with knives
But that night I refused to play the victim.
So I was standing in front of the door with a kitchen knife
Waiting for evil to break in.
In a couple of minutes, goons left me
But they refuse to abandon my life
As I refused to leave my watch that night.
First time I took the kitchen knife.
***
I end up drifting now.
Hardly impressed by torn apart streets and people;
And easily get excited by
Any sketchy ventures I was brought into;
Getting all sleepy
Cause I was up till the morning news;
Keeping distance
At family reunions or when I am with my muse.
I'm used to it now.
I think I was woken-up.
Glad being alive with no fear.
I am a kitchen knife when I look in the mirror.
