Close your Eyes by Daria Kudenko

— Close your eyes, Steve. There is still a little more.

He closed them.
- What do you see?
He had blacknesses under his eyes, but he knew that he should not see it. Her voice was so gentle that
the blackness dissipated by its wind like dust.
Now he sees what he should [see]:
«Her smell, the knock of her heart, which beats in time with mine.
Silky hair and eyes filled with tears - she said she was never as happy as at that moment. Right away
she called me Steve, but no, not Steve - Stevie.
***
— Belle, what are you thinking about?
—About freedom. About power. About infinity. Look, water, hitting the shore, splits into the
smallest spray, and it seems that the stone won. But the tiniest droplet still remains a part of the sea,
and it will fall down, again merge with the wave and become with it as a single whole, as if it never
suffered defeat. And he will strike again. And again. And so long as it does not undercut the stone
and it does not surrender and does not collapse, turning into a small pebbled shingle. The sea can
not be curbed. It is stubborn, willful and always free. Do you understand?
- I want to my mummy, Belle.
***
She's so beautiful, and I'm such an idiot. An idiot, because allowed her to leave forever without
saying the most important thing. And also because I allowed myself to let her into my heart. But not
as deep as the sea.
When you are sixteen, the sea is a separate story, it caresses you, each time reaffirming the life that
pulses in you so desperately that sometimes you touch your wrist with your lips and think: how many
times a minute, how many times in ten seconds, is this it really my life? A familiar sensation from
childhood: in these blue veins, behind the pale, almost transparent skin on which sunburn is so hard
to lay, death lurks, from here it is: to open veins, that means death in veins, but then there is life -
tireless pulse, clock lives that are wound up and go well, but no one knows when it will stop, then
life and death live very close in our body.
***
I met her in Prague. 10 years later. She forgot what it was like: to feel on herself its blue [water]
surface, she forgot what it is: peering at its infinite depth and finding in it all that is necessary to heal
wounds in a heart. She exchanged it for noisy streets and city air.
I love the sea too much to forgive her for it.
At age 38 I got to know that my wife will not be able to give birth to my children. Since then, I hate
myself, but she, she loves me even more.
— Do not blame yourself, Stevie. They still live. They live inside of us. I feel their spirit, I feel like
they love you and will always love, while we are alive.
I'm 68. The diagnosis is leukemia. Now, one of them will die.»
You can open your eyes, Stevie.
He opened. They stood silently above the precipice and looked thoughtfully at the horizon. It was
his place. His sea.
- Tell me, what are you thinking about?
"About freedom, about power, about infinity" — he thought.