Svetlana

Svetlana is gone now. The man of steel will linger on forever. She cried out and told us how he broke her life. Her life. A broken mess. Running from place to place. From man to man. My old Russian aunts kept his photo on their wall. Their hero. Her demise.  With hands so small, she couldn't hold her own life in them.  Stuck as a little girl without a mother, when a bullet separated them.  Her father simply erased  it from her personal history. Leaving her to make her own way, knowing that she could not. Never able to recover. Not knowing where she belonged.  Stained for as long as she lived.

This is what comes from reading the obituaries every day. I do it because I am searching for a life and hope to find it in someone deceased.  Looking for the answer in the arc of someone else's life. I am hoping for  a non-linear story, of course, because if a pattern develops, then it's out of the question. I am looking for something along the lines of plumber becomes celebrated painter. Or, she published her first novel at 87.

Svetlana could have taken the broken pieces and made herself stronger. But the determinist I know would say that it was impossible. It was simply her fate. I refuse though. I see my broken places and work on repairing them. The wounds are deep, but the world is vast. I cast a net to find a way out.
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