Back in the USSR, yeah...

"He'll be deported," they said.
"Not only the drugs charge, but because he's an Armenian dissident," they said.
"He'll do his time in the Armenian Army, then straight to jail."
"He won't make it that far, though..." they said, eyes closing briefly.
They were resigned to his fate,
but it was such new news to me that I couldn't dig their vibe.

Driving east across the Salt Flats, California still in my lungs, the song came on from my time with him.
(you remember that song...it was the one that filled you with sadness each time you drove away from him, because you knew you didn't love him, but you couldn't stop ripping holes in the fabric of your life just to be in his bed)
As I looked out across the salt, the desert, the blue sky and mountains--
I wished for his wellness, his safety.
I sent out prayers to the earth and sky for warm arms of love and safety to surround him.

I remembered that feeling of
not loving him,
but needing him.
And the way he couldn't remember the word for "kitten," so he called them, "puppy cats,"
or pronounced pirates, "pie-rats",
or the way he liked to smoke a cigarette after...just like in the movies.
He was sexy and foreign, but his dark eyes were wells of sadness and loss.
This made him seem older than his years (but still not close to mine)
and all my reaching never quite brought him within my grasp.

I've seen him a few more times over the years--
we still share that pair of
(now married)
best friends,
spiralling away from the pivot point where we all once collided,
so far-flung now as to never even be part of the same Venn diagram...
I found him once after my divorce,
for old time's sake,
because I can never resist a good cliche or a good time
(which, to be honest, it maybe wasn't...
it was sort of sad and lonely,
but maybe that was just his anguish
seeping through his skin and filling the air around us,
always a lost boy);
and I saw him once after I remarried
(so thoroughly happy that no one else really mattered for years);
he was happy for my happiness,
and neither of us felt the need for a time machine,
just conversation
out by the pool, under the orange trees,
in the Arizona heat.

His delight at my careless way with him--
"Straight fucked me and leave, she did!"
I can see the delighted wonder on his face, that huge smile -
He marveled that I didn't cling
(I marvel, too, because it wasn't really my style).

A book on psychology or meditation--
something faux-deep,
in which I inscribed "Invictus,"
because I wanted him to know he was the Master of his own destiny...
and now it looks like he could have done with a little more guidance.

An Armenian-English dictionary,
so I could get closer to him,
but my brain couldn't unscramble
the alphabet used to compose those words
or make sense of the phonetic spellings
and we were further apart than ever
as I stared at the pages
of unuseable bridges between our minds.

His roommate, watching from the doorway, unashamedly grinning at us.

The Russians! Remember the Russians?
They were gorgeous, and mildly terrifying.
All the right curves and exquisite cheek bones.
...but with a sharpness that left me speechless.
Those girls were the epitome of intimidating, and maybe in part because they knew the world from which our sexy boys came.

And now, one flimsy immigration hearing stands between him and a brutal end.
It may be fair,
but I don't have to like it.