"Following the lodestar"
by Veronika Gorlova

             For Roma, and all those who didn't make it


The men from my hometown are getting snatched
             from the streets—put into uniforms.

They stop leaving their apartments, survive

on what their wives manage to bring home, on what they pickled
             last season. The nuclear plant is occupied, there are rumours
             of something worse

             than war.

My uncle runs across the border, crosses a river in a boat, collapses
             on the other side.

We wake up to something worse than arrest.

             Thousands have died following the lodestar. Bodies collapsing mid-
             journey, bodies dissolving into the sea. Bodies brackish, swollen,
             unidentifiable. Empire fossicking bodies through borders.

My family is what my grandfather would call verklempt.

Some have no words, others scream. My grandmother cries:

as she walks by his photo, sitting silently in her armchair,
stopped short in the middle of the kitchen, rag in hand.

             Canadian family says their relative starved to death in Gaza
             waiting for a visa.

I follow my cousins during the ceremony: three spoonfuls of rice
             and chocolate, three utterances of a phrase
             that doesn’t stick.

His face glossy in a casket, smiling sickly—miles away
             from his destination.

My cheeks flush from all the vodka I drank to be polite.
             I can’t say no

             to what death asks of me.

             Two buses arrive at the crossing. Some have spent their entire life
             savings waiting for this moment. They are told they are four hours
             late, it closed at midnight. They can see the lodestar, it’s right there,
             out of reach.

I should have.
                                    I shouldn’t have.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's summer issue #231