The world's underfoot

Artem stood at the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God on Kozlen and did not dare to enter the church. His grandmother baptized him when he was a child, and although he rarely went to the temple, he still believed in God Artem, albeit not in a bookstorey way, not in the right way. He attended the church either in case of unsolvable questions, or in case of great joy. He placed candles, read prayers specially printed for people like him on the A4 sheets and talked to him as he could, in his own words...

She won't let chaos prevail. This morning, the story will be clear and complete, and she will be able to retell it: she took her daughter and her little girlfriend to music. This will be a fact. A drawing on the surface of time. And the feelings will move to the distance of an indistinguishable background, which does not necessarily need to pay attention to. She crosses the snowy street mass, dodges the splashes. It's hot. Her legs are heavier than in a recurring childhood dream, where she has to run along the country street on an urgent but incomprehensible need...

Masha's annoyed. This makes Masha feel naked, despite a bunch of warm clothes and gloves that you don't want to take off even in the car. And Alina says. More precisely, Alina talks silently. Her gentle, round face contrasts with the rough intonations of a low, broken voice. Masha, locked in a car with her, feels like a hostage. Behind, in the child's chair sits Machine daughter. Masha calls her a Rabbit to herself - that was her name once in childhood. Nearby - Rosa is Alina's daughter, a transparent two-year-old with a sharp nose and eternally open mouth, surprised forever...

- Oh, what are you doing here, finally? - Mom couldn't help it, and her voice trembled. - Dad, Mom doesn't want to see other people. Don't bother. I don't really want to either. You swim yourself. Meet, talk. Nobody is holding you back. - I don't hold anybody myself. - What do you mean? - My mother cut off the thread with her teeth, put a needle in the coil and straightened the skirt, and the skirt almost flew away in the wind. - Ay, leave it alone! - Dad waved his hand again. - Not to talk...

At the same time yesterday we were on the beach, and Dad was preparing to fish on his drifter, and Mom was sitting on a big rock and sewing up her old skirt, without pity tightening and turning it out. - I'll run to Tamara on my way home. She called and asked me to come in. It's important," she said. When are you going to come home? - And you sailed with us, gull. - Vitya, I beg you. This marine life was enough for me to live three lives ahead of us. An hour later, Mom kept sewing up her skirt...

I didn't know what to get my mom. Not because she had everything. Quite the contrary. Mom just couldn't be happy with the little things. All the little joys were bottle stoppers that wouldn't block the kilometers of her destitute soul's craters. And my mother did not find any sense in the traffic jams. Things were different with Dad. He rejoiced at every fish caught, every meeting with whales sailing near the drifter. And then, for days and days, he walked around winged. The hardest part was for me: I wanted to be happy as a father, but I had to be compassionate with my mother's craters...

That's where I'm gonna start. Sergei, when I die, you remember one thing - do not buy anything expensive, everything should be modest. And don't do expensive rituals. It won't save me from my sins anyway," my grandmother wrote with her mean medical handwriting in a green notebook. I have never seen my grandfather. His father doesn't remember him. And his family always kept silent about him. Children have an oddity that upset adults - to turn everything upside down in boxes, chests, to go through the cabinets...

The rabbit was silent. - And I know why the flowers were thrown out on the road. The rabbit was silent again. With Yulka, it's the best way to do that, and when it's bullying, and in general. But it was very curious. She waited. Yulka went to the bushes and picked full gooseberry pockets. She came back and started biting berries that looked like little watermelons. Sometimes she spit on concrete. The rabbit waited. - In short, there was such a thing. That aunt there, she hid a stash under the mattress...

Late in the evening, the mother and grandmother were watching the news on the terrace, and Rabbit was lying with her mother's head on her lap. It was uncomfortable. Grandma was whispering with a lot of pressure: - Well, he took all her roses and cut them all to pieces. - Oh, my God! So what? - What? And threw it outside. Then she put her lips to her mother's ear and whispered silently. My mother answered: - Wow. I didn't know. - And nobody knew, - my grandmother finished her edifyingly, having broken away from my mother's ear...

Hanging on a fence is painful and delightful. Sunset hits the eyes. The palm of the hand is pierced by the rib of the board. Legs barely reach the longitudinal plank. Behind the fence there is a forest. The rule of absorbing the evening sun is to stay in place until it disappears. Do not look away, just blink. Liquid gold is poured into the eyes, the forest is caught, everything that Rabbit has on his sides and behind him is caught: the back facade of the house, untidy lilac bushes, evening smells, an old toilet and a cold, eternally damp baths inside...

I think he was yelling, "Have a nice trip!" Or maybe not. Maybe he yelled "unhappy". Or maybe something completely different. The fact is that he yelled very quietly. Whispering. Silently. To myself. Externally, everything looked as if the scream ripped him apart, clobbered inside: his shoulders bounced, his lips curved. He could open his mouth and publish a howl, wheezing, a set of sounds of wild tonality, and could transform it all into a couple of words of bouncing tone. And then it would have been something like goodbye...

They've been living together for two years now, but it still seems to Oleg that Uncle Yura is their guest. He still gives gifts as awkward as giving them to other people's children, even if he asks for something about school, just because he needs it, not because he is interested. In general, Uncle Yura tries not to be alone with Oleg. And if it happens, they both feel uncomfortable. And now Oleg is reluctant to return to the apartment, where this stranger is engaged in his own business and, as it seems to Oleg, in every way interferes with him...