When Did My Evenings Return to the Shortest Routes by Olga Maslova

When Did My Evenings Return to the Shortest Routes

skipping your street—my vespers—
where, ten yards away,
I’d catch your silhouette
at 8 p.m. exactly:

soft table light. A plate.
a glass of wine,
some flowers, a sage-green wall.
Oh, Salve, my Regina.

It is a shock to see you by the window
in daylight, gazing out:
a quiet smile, a teacup, something blue,
smudged by receding darkness.

You’re not looking at me—
but at the dogwood.
You wouldn’t know my car—
I totaled the Subaru.

Have the hummingbirds returned,
or is it our old friend,
the robin from that first summer?
You kept its blue eggshells.

Our Bible was full of birds:
the swallows, owls, ravens.
We loved like cardinals,
and fought like magpies.

I don’t remember your body
ever this soft, this quiet, unfolded,
unfamiliar—as if you are waiting
for annunciation.

You draw the curtains.
I turn, head home,
toward the rising red full moon
in the hollowed evening.
The tunnel of scattered green April light—
my only consolation.

*

Olga Maslova is a Ukrainian-American writer and theater designer, born and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. Maslova is the winner of LitMag’s 2025 Emily Dickinson Award for Poetry, and her work appears or is forthcoming in “Beloit Poetry Journal,” “New Ohio Review” (nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net), “New American Writing,” “Plume Poetry,” “Frontier Poetry” (second place, 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize), “RHINO Poetry,” “Strange Horizons,” “Naugatuck River Review” (semi-finalist for the Naugatuck Prize), and elsewhere. Her manuscript “Light Travels” is a semifinalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award. She is also the librettist for several large-scale vocal works composed by Ilya Demutsky, including the oratorio “The Last Day of the Eternal City,” the opera “Black Square,” and the art song cycle “Venetian Cycle.” These works have been performed in Moscow, Russia, and in the U.S. Maslova is an associate professor of theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More information can be found at https://www.olgapoetry.com.