Run away from home tonight,

in pajamas and a tracksuit.

I’ll teach you a few things

in the dark behind the garages.

The evening at the city’s edge

is dusted with southern snow.

I’m singing Zachar May’s songs

and somehow seem good to you.

We barely know each other,

but, trying hard to seem reckless,

you’re inviting me into your quiet waters

while the demons are away.

Your older brother’s at some Russian march,

your mom’s working hard, your dad’s drinking.

Don’t try to act older—

life will take care of that soon enough.

There’ll be tattoos like scriptures,

early lines and wrinkles,

there’ll be Bali, far-off places,

there’ll be all kinds of men,

there’ll be countless wild stories, my dear,

we’re both running from childhood,

some on a fast train, some on an ambulance.

Kids can kiss at the docks in Nice,

but where are we supposed to love at sixteen?

We’re just trying to survive first.

Somewhere the night grows heavy,

casting a sweet, hazy spell.

But here it grows dark late—

Everyone would be forty years old,

Even Romeo and Juliet.

This is Russia, where for centuries

older kids rule over

younger old men.

I bet that someday, painted against a wall,

we’ll be lined up, gray and thirsty,

facing a guard with a baby’s face.

Like interest rates, relentless, inevitable,

life will bring everyone to their knees—

just like I have with you, roughly.

But who knows, really—

in this grave-cold life,

happiness, as a side effect,

comes around, rare but real.

Don’t be scared, it’s all just a joke.

May luck stay on your side.

And please, don’t even think

of tattooing my name on your wrist.

You were doing round-offs and backbends with flair

and hadn’t learned to count your pocket money.

You’d known me barely a week,

but somehow decided we’d get married.

You believed in amulets with a certain power,

tarot cards, horoscopes, and other kinds of mysticism,

and that Geminis are usually terribly sweet.

It seems I messed up your statistics.

I was sure of my own coolness,

bold and cheerful on that gloomy day,

and we had practically no shared values.

But then, who needs them with a figure like yours.

Reading de Sade to you out loud on a park bench,

I figured you’d give in quickly, like the others.

I remember noting, with frustration, the first time:

It seems you messed up my statistics.

May, the season of autumn skies, covered in clouds;

In Petersburg, there’s winter and three types of autumn.

The city lies buried in snow, and then suffers through

long, damp withdrawals.

But in the wind, we weren’t cold—

we kissed, and leaves fell from the sky.

Astrologers said it wasn’t a season for love.

It seems we messed up their statistics.

Time passes, and experience comes with time;

the mind—an erogenous node of seasoned lovers;

you, as always, not quite here or there,

me, never on time, never in the right place.

Condemning those past days,

stabbing words into them like sharp daggers,

we made charts of our mutual actions.

It seems those statistics spoiled us both.

A weather balloon is less reliable than a passport stamp—

they say tomorrow will be thirty degrees, like Italy.

But statistically, it should be overcast.

Though anomalies do happen.

Sometimes they happen if you lose hope once.

You learned to live, I started believing in mysticism.

Yes, statistically, things don’t work out often.

But hey, maybe to hell with these statistics...

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