*This is a poem written by my bud, Ethan, on leaving St. Petersburg. He's pretty awesome and a great writer (even though he will try to tell you otherwise). I couldn't help but repost because, even if these are not my words, they are the words of my heart.
Goodbye, Lenin
I.
I don’t want to leave, but I’ll go all the same
This place has too many memories
The park where you wasted hours
The bridge where you fell in love
The room where you caved in
The street corner where…never mind
Was it all a dream?
Does morning make it a nightmare?
There are days when I wake up in a cold sweat
And days when I could kiss the sky
Or are they the same?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell
No, no – that sounds worse than it is
Poetry makes things so ambiguous
Searching for meaning, for closure
When maybe it just was.
II.
Sitting in class, the hours tick by
One step closer, closer
What have I gotten myself into?
The professor is speaking in tongues
And I can’t stop staring at this page
The semester is lost, if it all ends here
But the deed is done
Joseph and Mary fly into Egypt
I close my eyes and step into the city
To quote: the city steps right back to me
The Neva heaves a Petersburg sigh
People pass by in an unkempt tide
Saints and sailors
Maude and maiden
Friend and foe
A human haze.
III.
It’s hard to write about the good times
They crumble away into bits and pieces
Remember the bar, and the fire, and the goat;
The bottles, the brass, and the moose;
A church, a shot and a metro stop;
A pancake, a punk and a party.
Too much, too fast
Get out into the street
A post-ordeal silence settles over the city
Or, as I like to call it, Sunday
Recharge and rewind
Then do it again:
A toast to our lives
A walk with a friend
A kiss with a what-have-you
A moment shared, but brief.
IV.
I could go on
The seconds fly by through faded glass
Or better yet, through a biting frost
Because there was plenty of that, wasn’t there?
But we toughed it out
Kept our chins up, and other clichés
We walk by the tourists
And what have they earned?
We forced the days longer
Until the sun had to catch up
And we took the shots from every direction
From old ladies and shop clerks and each other
But who cares if we get a little roughed up
Just battle scars and trophies
This city is mine
Or it was, for a while.
V.
Sing along with the tune on the radio
And think of us fondly
A few words from time to time
That’s really all we can ask
Forgive the spots and stains
Substitute the whole for the part
In that strange moment when, despite it all
We see each other again
See, it’s not a small world
There are just narrow paths we take
For better or for worse, we were together
In love with and loved by a city
We appreciate what we have
And then it’s gone
Nothing surprises us in Petersburg
And nothing makes us tremble back home.
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