master and margarita

St. petersburg is your favourite city, you said, wearing an expression I can't quite describe. Or remember. A strange mix of awe, resignation, love. You said something about the architecture, and that I must visit some day. There're trams in St. Petersburg too, aren't there, I asked. You looked at me and nodded, wondering if I'd been there. I think Dostoevsky wrote about them in his novels, I said. You said you didn't like Dostoevsky. Too depressed and depressing.

Later I went online to have a look at your favourite city. Now I know what you meant by architecture. It was Vienna on a grander scale. I couldn't really tell from those photos, but I could see why you fell in love with it. I would too, I think, and now I badly want to go to St. Petersburg. Not just because of the city, but because of you.

I'll think of you whenever I traipse across a Russian square, or pass a village that is your hometown, or whenever I read a novel like Master and Margarita that you love but can't explain why. Neither can I explain why, and if I can't explain it, how can I know? I don't know, but I know I'll think of you whenever I remember you, your lips, your quietness, and how we drank to our health and happiness and fell into bed and everything was white and time left us and all around us was burning, and burning, and burning.