HALYNA

-

She woke up wife warm

Bony and blonde

In the marital clinch hold of her husband

After dreaming of painting a

Pysanky in her childhood kitchen

Or maybe she saw herself 

Twirling at a small village wedding

In an embroidered folk dress with ribbons in her hair

Compelled to dance by

The music of Vidoplyasova 

Or perhaps she saw scenes from Battleship Potemkin

Or a Muratova film on the silver screens of her closed eyelids.


But it was the nascent pink light of that Santa Fe morning

That informed her that it was time to levitate off the mattress

And become warm mommy

Who in just a matter of minutes would bribe her child

With the promise of a slice of Medovyk

If he was a good boy today

Which was followed by 

A kiss lightly stamped on his forehead

Like a royal seal

Which in just a few hours

He would remember

As the way that she said goodbye.


In the shower 

Which pelted her like a summer rainstorm

She suddenly felt like Lyudmila at the end of The Stolen Princess

Which made her sing her wedding song

Oh Marishka

At the top of her lungs

And through the steam slathered glass of the door

She saw the wavy image of her husband

Dancing as if he was holding her.


And then she was on the set,

A church,

All lenses and purpose

Like she was riding her beloved horse getting it to go beyond a trot and into the gait of a canter 

And in that moment she felt like everything was perfect as

The A.D. yelled “COLD GUN!”

And in the chain reaction of events

Which is the permanent document of tragedy

The white-bearded actor

Swaggered like John Wayne

Aimed his firearm 

And let loose with a barrage of make-believe bullets

Which in seconds

Ripped open Halyna’s very real stomach

Severed her arteries

And turned her skin

As cold as the Soviet military base in the

Arctic circle

Where once upon a time 

she was surrounded

By reindeer and nuclear submarines.

And just like that

Her life

Ended.

Just like a movie

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