There is a country I see on the internetand in the street outside I see a countrythere is also a country I see in my mindI dream about this country more than anyone I ever lovedit looks just like a glowing constellation exactly like GodI can talk to you about it like we are at a party,even though it will feel wrongbut in the beginning I still always want to tryIn my actual city, and in my real childhoodthere was a dark narrow hallwaya kitchen where we played cards when the lights got shut offmy older brother could make real caramel over the gas flamethere were large transparent cockroaches behind the stovepink and green dresses my parents bought mefrom a couple who couldn’t keep them for their own daughterI went to her closet to pick them out myselfMy dad started a computer repair business just before the collapse of the soviet unionit was hard to make money in the 90s,and my dad was one of the only people in Odessa then to know how to do what he didwhen he was little he and his friends used to catch and eat pigeons after schoolI don’t know how old he was when he got his first gunIt always feels wrong to say the literal factsin the 90s we were always missing that bullseye anywaybecause I guess it turned out that not even a time like thatcould make art about forests or love seem ridiculous —at least not for the people we knewPeople often ask why we moved,but it wasn’t quite related to all thisI can’t tell you everythingI don’t know why, but I think partlybecause it would make too good a storya Real Storyfilled with geniuses and murderers, rapists and lovein your mind it will be turned into a popular TV show,but the actors will not have these lines on their faces,lines of loneliness and mental illness and the powerlessness of loveyour parents and Jake’s never have those linesI try not to see thisbut actually more than anything they look to methe way soviet people looked on propaganda posters in the thirtieslike someone, someone else, lyingand I see I also look like thatThere is a story I wish I could tell everyone, not just youthough I still don’t know howabout people who have to leave the worldand find out in middle age, after already living,that everything is quite empty, and they just don’t existmight never exist all the way again, nor their childrenit makes you bored. and it makes you meanand eventually you just learn to make peace with it, and enjoy thingsbecause maybe it is actually better herebecause eventually you grow up, and all those dead bodies and blank people,that live in you like heavenlylead, are not just a story anymoreWhen we moved to America,my dad worked double shifts at a gas stationhe also made hundreds of extra dollars a week by picking up lottery ticketspeople hadn’t scratched carefully, and threw on the groundI think in addition to that he would take electronic tags off stolen clothesnow he has a better job at a government lab. he thinks it is very coolto you he is like a soviet cowboy, with all his guns, stories, and endless knowledgeI love him too for all that, despite what he was like to us then,because a lot of time has gone by now, since the beginning;he never could breathe well out of his nose after all those gas station yearsand whenever I hear him trying to get air,which is pretty funny sounding, I still think about Shelland even now, when I lookat the scraped open eyesof the comic actorsperforming soviet state fairy taleson the huge flatscreen in his TV roomI remember that my favorite book when I was six was monte christothat I saw ten thousand gymnastsfall like red flowers in the red squarefor ten thousand red maysthat there was everything you could wantexcept maybe rock n rolland so that is howI ended up having my tenthbirthday at Chucky Cheese