To the memory of Oxana
I met Oxana quite recently, almost just before her death. I was participating in a local exhibition of hand-made things that was devoted to an anniversary of our Pulp Factory Union. It was a hot evening in June, everybody felt tired, we already completed the exhibition and were packing our things before next part of the program - singers competition.
A girl with a guitar approached me to ask for a piece of rope or thread for her guitar. I gave her a bunch of threads and together we weaved a hang for the guitar. In doing so, we exchanged a couple of words; in the vicinity her little son was playing a toy car. In a week, it was the 30th of June, I for the first and last time was listening to her singing, she was playing guitar with the same white hang we had weaved from threads… and on Saturday she died.
A strange, fast-fleeting encounter of two people who are thinking of the same but avoid talking about it. If we had known each other longer, who knows, we could have started talking about parachuting and I could have told her about effluent treatment areas and that it can be very dangerous to jump near a factory. May be…
She died on her second and last jump on a windy day - the wind took her to the area of Bratsk Aluminium Smelter. She landed on the territory of an effluent treatment pond where she drowned.
Questions on why she was jumping on a windy day near a factory were left without an answer.
But she left her poems, songs, a little son and the memory of a wonder called Oxana.
That is the story…
Poems Oxana Smirnova (rus)
