Digging Press

Your Gulag Eyes
by Anna Lea Jancewicz

We were walking in the snow, you remember?

We were aware of our shoulders almost touching, we were aware of every muscle and bone shifting under our crazy skins. The sky sagged darkly, swollen, and I wrote my name with my feet, big, in cursive, tracking back to cross the t.

I wanted to smell you on my clothes; I wanted your frosted eyelashes to sing. I thought you might have been bleeding, under your feathers. I wanted to probe between the stiff hollow roots, probe with my fingers. Bleeding or not, it hurt to not touch. Bellies full of pins, hands blistering scared.

This is the face an angel makes. This is the weight of hunger.

We could have been crossing the Prussian border on foot. We could have been orphaned lovers aiming slingshots at the blind-folded moon. We could have been wolves in the white. We could have eaten it like sugar.

I wanted to unlock, I wanted to bite into the unsaid. I thought you might climb, on the wind. I wanted to overflow into your gulag eyes. The clouds unpierced. The earth kept its subtle spin.

This is what you learn. Not everybody gets a coffin. Not everybody gets to be happy.

We were walking in the snow, you remember?

Anna Lea Jancewicz  lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where she home-schools her children and haunts the public libraries. She is an Associate Editor at Night Train, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming at Atticus Review, Hobart, matchbook, Prime Number, WhiskeyPaper, and many other venues. More at: http://annajancewicz.wordpress.com/.

Stories @ Digging Through the Fat: Volume 2, Issue 6
March 25, 2015
Photography by: Gessy Alvarez