Issue Thirty-Three - Winter 2019

My Ticket to Russia

By Laura Merleau

How many times will I pack
my suitcases with so many
layers of sweaters, tights,
wool coat, gloves, scarf, hat,
boots – yes, get ready for
the cold of Russia. But never
arrive. While you wait.
Still and forever you wait,

gilding the roses in your
frozen garden, gilding
the tsar’s throne in your
frozen palace, gilding
your already golden heart,
beating pure and light
in the frozen velvet
of its blood. Whoever

you are, you were
someone I never loved
more than today when
checking my plane
ticket for the time of
departure only to realize
once again I missed
the flight you scheduled
so many months if
not years ago before
we kissed, before we
met, before we were

born in another climate
altogether, touching
the deep roots of the
wild blossoms without
names because we had
not yet named them.

Copyright Merleau 2019

Laura Merleau 's novella Little Fugue was published by Woodley Memorial Press in 1993. She received a doctoral degree in American Literature from the University of Kansas in 2000, but soon had to go on disability due to fibromyalgia. In 2008, she experienced a kundalini awakening which enabled her to return to work and eventually go off disability. By 2015, she found her first full-time job teaching AP English to Chinese students at The Affiliated High School of South China Normal University, and is currently the Head of the English Department there. After a trip to Tibet last summer, she started writing again. Her poetry has appeared in Mixed Fruit, The Apple Valley Review, and Wordgathering.

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