“Manuscripts don’t burn.”
—Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Akhmatova stands
by the wood stove
with Anna Ahrens
in the kitchen of the apartment they shared,
on the morning after the man they shared
was arrested.
They all lived together,
the compromise
forced on them—
until eleven last night.
Now that Nikolasha is gone, all that matters
burns—anything compromising.
Anna asks Anna: “But what is
compromising?”
Men are siphoned like bits of cream
from fermenting modern families.
Women behave as ordered,
cook with ash.
Into the fire,
Nikolay Punin’s work:
Apollon. Other posh
literary journals.
His articles about Futurists.
Art history.
Ahrens whispers: “Anything could be
evidence. What’s on his desk?”
A doctor, a good cook,
she knows how to solve problems,
how to approach immolation
as a task.
The poetess clutches the doctor’s hand:
“What will happen to Nikolasha
if we erase his past? If he doesn’t return,
if he can’t fill it in, will you
help me remember?”
“But he’s coming back!” Ahrens
shouts. He’s coming back!
“Hush,” the mistress says
to the wife, embraces her
by the faint embers, whispering
to hush her own doubt: “We
will bring it all back.”
