I wish the ash to my house

The new auto-romance of the writer and female Daria Serenko “I wish the ash to my house” was partially written in the special reception in 2022. He has already been translated into German and Swedish, and in the summer of 2023 he will be published in Russian at the Babel publishing house. Discourse publishes the text from the novel - with the memories of Dasha’s speech to the judge who reproached her for the absence of children, with poems about the boys who turned into mutilated bodies on a foreign land, and reasoning about the “dead blue grooms” .

I spent half a day in the Moscow City Court at the appeal in the hope that 15 days will turn into 10 days. Based on the trial, two police officers were driving a car in a city, flooded with spring sun rays. I looked at the recruiting buildings and thought about how everything around is actually fragile, brought to the limit: old cops reminding me of dad, these flickering buildings, this light on the border of the seasons. Inside me, too, everything was fragile and brought to the limit.

In court, I spent about three hours with my defenders. After seven days in prison, I tried not to be very different from them: my hair was clean (I washed it over the shell from the bottle, since they were taken to the shower only once a week), it was not smelled from me. On my cheeks I had sparkles. I can well go for a free person.

The judge was a man of about sixty, thin and tall, with gray bald patches. He had cheerful eyes, and he did not hide them, looked directly in his face. I rather liked this, although I knew from past experience that the nourner the judge, the sometimes the verdict is stricter. Inquiring about my name and marital status, he closed disappointedly and handed it out “Plooko, well, how are you so” when I replied that I had no children. I felt the rage of hair roots, for the first time my scalp burned with anger. My defenders took turns voicing claims to the court: the symbol for which I sit was not recognized as extremist, hold illegally, did not promote violence, and did not call. I also had the right to speak out, I got up and began to pronounce in one breath everything that had accumulated inside me there.

“Dear court, your honor, you rightly noticed that my political weight is still small. What you, according to your words, first hear about me, is quite natural. With politics in the narrow sense of the word, I began to work only in these elections.

My main occupation is activism aimed at women affected by gender violence. I understand that my case sucked from my finger is only necessary to intimidate other girls, girls and women who decide to take at least some active position. Right now the process on Julia Tsvetkova continues, which is charged with the spread of pornography for drawings of the female body. This case is also needed to intimidate.

If the goal was in this, then the court has already reached it: I have served my 7 days and this scared everyone. Honestly, it frightened this even two of my neighbors in the cell, in whom the punishment was 10 and 5 days - for drunken driving and for attacking with a knife.

In the end, I want to answer your remark about the lack of children. You probably didn’t even think that you could say this to a person who, for example, could not have children. If a respected court is so interested in the fact that I have children, I propose to let me go from the special receiver so that I will make immediate attempts to bring offspring for the benefit of my homeland. ”

At the end, my voice trembled with tension. It seemed that tears immediately evaporated through the skin without stirring. I sat in my place, throwing a pack of sheets on the table: the state had never shown me so clearly my control over my reproductive potential.

For 15 days I was left unchanged.

***

Those who were in love with her
did not return from the war
those who kissed her lips
Then they killed

And they could kill her

I don't understand
How someone else's death is placed in a person
If everyone has its own -
And even with her it is not clear what to do?

Like a boy standing with a flower at the entrance,
turns into a boy who shoots point blank?
turns into a boy who gives the order to shoot point blank?
It turns into a boy who is not a disobedience order?

With him you had the first sex a few years ago
He was careful and asked if everything was in order
Your bodies shone in the core of the February Night
It was not a big love
But there was love
You looked into each other's eyes
And they loved each other
You remember his body, his warmth

Here it is, mutilated, in the photographs
In the channel "Look for your"
Miserable and sprouted
With traces of decay

How many war crimes are on his account?
More or less than kisses that you can remember?
How did the body that touched you turn into a body that not to bury in an open coffin?

My heart has become darker than my state
I no longer feel pity, I feel rage

I remember his kisses on my lips -
Not all of them I gave my consent

I remember the night after the first night -
I also did not give consent to her
but convinced herself that she gave

He said he did not hear "no"
I did not feel tears
He often used the verb "take"
"I take you" - "You surrender"

Then I wished him to die
And then she apologized for it

And so he died

On a foreign land

which cannot be taken

and which is not given

***

The dead blue grooms, returning from the war, forever lie in bed to their brides. They lie on pure sheets, as in coffins, and women next to them, still alive, lie like in tombs, and all people in every panel high -rise building lie like in coffins. The people even appeared the saying "in the war and in the houses as in coffins." It became scary to live, but it was even worse to die.

And the grooms became terrible. Not only is the blue and stinks from them, like from a cattle-beam, everyone also has their own injury: someone has a gut, someone has half a face spent and flowed, someone has no both legs. It’s hard to love them, but it is not easy to bury them. Women sigh and lie down with them, trying not to show disgust, it’s a pity. Neither strength nor tears remained; For what he died - it is not clear whether he loved - neither ask nor remember. The grooms are now silent, who have their fingers-they can only show them silently for something. One other day he sat with his mouth open and poked himself in his mouth. The bride thought that she was asking for food, put a piece of bread pierced in milk under a swollen tongue, and the bread is stupid so on the mouth and fell out.

You won’t be particularly earned in the next world, so they are now put off from the grave for the wedding. Some payments, compensation, are dripping a little by little, you can live. One pair - dead and alive - will soon play a wedding and commemoration at the same time, what to spend twice. The groom must be mourned first, and then you can congratulate the young people. The bride is also a widow, so her outfit is special: the dress is white, and the veil is black. And the groom will be dressed in a father’s costume, his father was blown up in Chechnya, and now the suit has become fit for his son, the whole family is proud of.

It is terrible to the brides, however, to stay on the first wedding night with their grooms. The man is weak, he is hard to give the dead living. As if he, once alive, are cheating with him, now dead. As if two different people are alive and dead. And it is no longer possible to choose between them.

Of course, women would prefer the living. It would be so good to kiss them under a blooming apple tree in early May. Or put off at sea. Or drink tea with rolls from a stall on the way from work. Or send them to a night store for sprats in a tomato during the first pregnancy. At night, lying next to their clumsy dead, they dream of the living. God is the judge.