Postcard to Mom By Valery Petrovskiy

Postcard to Mom

By Valery Petrovskiy

Just show me your palms:

I’d like to drink water

From out of your

Cupped hands.

Let a drop of my tears

Sink

In the smallest of your palm

Wrinkles.

You fondled me a lot

With your hands,

You raised me up to heaven

Not once,

When the Earth rested against your feet,

And clouds

Covered up

My infantile

Face.

The world happened to be

Not so small

As the log hut

On a steep bank was,

Where in a little window

Celestial distance

Would close up,

And a rowan tree knocked

The windowpane

In the morning.

There is no more

Little cabin there,

I’ve lost the key to its front door.

…And Mom is lonely waiting

For a postcard

Fingering

My playthings.

Valery Petrovskiy graduated from VKS Higher School, Moscow in Journalism. His work was published in CLRI, Literary Yard, Missing Slate, Ivory Tower, elsewhere. He is the author of short story collections “Into the Blue on New Year’s Eve” (Hammer and Anvil Books, 2013), “Tomcat Tale” (Editura StudIS, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist to Open Russia's Literary Contest, 2012, he resides in a remote village by the Volga River, Russia.

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