Sasha

Who brings a lie, to a thirteen’s year old life, one you can't deny, smoking endless cigarettes, chasing numbers across the sky, they carry the same distance, the river in July, the cool evening light, are debts ever untied, they killed Papa in Tashkent, I performed for Stalin terrified, anxious to avoid his gibbet, Tass reported my flight, it was good for Philliskaya, they didn’t ask me why, my handsome pirouettes, love measured nights, to dance without regrets, I was only a child.