The red-water station
The sky will not be midnight blue in St. Petersburg tonight.
Someone has told me that our country is forming a new alliance
with a leader who forces vigilance of his terrified citizens.
For them, this night produces only garishly bright stars.
But for us, we have been given a transparent moon,
and we have lost the illusion of a ceiling-
Our sky tonight is infinite, and it is a true black.
In historical records,
no one writes of good spies.
There is no description of the woman
who avoided an executioner's pistol
because she reminded him of a man.
Good spies are not caught-
They meet at circular fountains years later on dark foggy nights,
dressed for the ballroom.
Good spies fall childlike in love,
spend decades train-hopping to distant and exotic nations,
then marry, moving far to the East.
Having not aged at all, they become artists and writers.
Good spies are as immortal as imaginary cities.
As St. Petersburg is tonight-
So you must know that when our deaths
are masked under the plight of a dense and juvenile nation,
when someone decides to disguise bombs as stars,
you will know where to find me.
Kimberly Abruzzo is a graduate of Emerson College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing. Her work has been seen in Can We Have Our Ball Back? A writer currently residing in Cambridge, MA, she believes the world is very vast, and should be experienced accordingly. By the time this poem is published, she will either have or have not achieved her dream of experiencing the Aurora Borealis over Northern Norway. (kimberly.abruzzo@gmail.com)