letters (something real)

I want to write about something real and tangible. I hold a glass of red wine;
it reminds me of blood, gushing from a small but deep cut
over the little child’s forehead: fear, scream,
thick dark liquid over the transparent sclera of the eye.
I tried to stop the bleeding; he wrestled me to the floor,
both covered with blood that dried quickly over our hands and faces…
He tries to run away with the flow, I try to restrain it.
The pain, mine –emotional, imagined, his- physical and real,
erased by the surge of adrenaline.
His panic disappeared by the moment when the fire truck arrived
with sirens on, followed by the ambulance.
We both are cured after the nine fancy stitches over the left eyebrow
and a few red popsicles.

I have a sip and observe the drops lazily sliding back into the glass…

In a flash I see an English man in the hospital bed.
He arrived two days earlier here, in Detroit,
to meet his online girlfriend for the first time.
On second thought, he may have followed his destiny through distance
and time where his life could be spared.
He felt ill for no reasons at all.
He was turning ashy in front of my eyes.
The violent wave of vomit was leaving his body with his last breath.
A friend of mine, intercepting the trajectory,
was covered by blood instantly from her hair to her toes.
He lived after surgical emergency. And her…
she was taking a shower,at first with her clothes and shoes on
and then in the nude. She cried all the time,
with hiccups, chocking on her tears,
trembled like a little bird, when I dried her off.

Then I saw something I never saw before,
a man on his way to his final destination.
I am a little girl, a viewer of his Path, among thousands of others.
He dropped his heavy cross and kneeled to pick it up,
when our eyes briefly met.
Two tear drops fell, mixed with the dry blood and sweat on his face
and slid over his cheeks in two pinky stripes.
He cried for me. I knew…
Don’t ask me why and how.

Heavy droplets trapped in the glass, real and tangible.
...I can see through it...

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya