In the Absence of Clocks

Paradise

53 Paradise Odessa cannot hide from itself. The waves glance off the shoreline. The shipyard cranes work slowly, separate what is not sea from the sea. The bread, baked without molasses. The soup, white with kefir. Alone, I sit in a café stirring cream into coffee. I don’t know what to say when the waiter slides next to me. Eventually, I admit my stories. The girl I met on this beach, our revolution in the streets of Kiev. The man finds vodka. Slaps down pickles, bowls of pistachios. How do you know that Adam and Eve were communists, he asks. His laughter foams like the sea, cannot hide from itself. Because they had no clothes to wear, no sausage to eat, and still they thought it was paradise. ...