I am finally reading Anna Karenina.
You won’t know this, and my need
to tell you won’t change matters.
I keep thinking there must be a line to you.
Some secret number I’ve yet to be given.
I know life was hard.
You could be difficult.
I could be stoic.
The stronger your need, the more
I withheld. Such was our affliction.
Now, all I have is wordless faith
that some part of you understood
that you left your mark, that you remain.
Not only in the loose skin of my ageing hands
or the crack of my voice in early morning hours,
but in what you sought out: the epic, the tragic,
the inevitable crush of the powerful on the weak.
And when I finally get to Doctor Zhivago
and The Brothers Karamazov you won’t know this either,
but I’ll keep telling you. This will be our new story. A silent one.