Poem I wrote before going to Russia

 strings 

It’s continuously a perpetual “Cold War” but on an individual level. The other never knows of, never trusts the other side. Oh how can this miscommunication be healed or where is the peace that lies between both—where can understanding be reached?

 But not temporary understanding, but true, consistent definitive relationships? 

Is there a way to overcome perpetual defense and attack, defense and attack, perpetual misperception and perpetual confusion? 

How many years does it span and how long must a soul harrow up this perplexity? Is there solace? Is there a bridge? 

Oh, if there could be a rope even at least a sturdy one, for even a single point to be communicated exactly and in a manner that the other side has no hesitancy in understanding, what it is? 

What is the modem with which we may build this street, this passage, this tunnel or this car? 

Can it ever come to fruition?  Is it impossible to see a unified place or connect between two different personal histories? 

I can’t understand. I can’t communicate singular thoughts. I know not the hardship, nor the pain, nor distress, nor agony. I know not, for I have experienced not. How then with my background of my own can I explain or attempt with some coherence and honesty of my own, connect and share my meager experience with something over there? With a pain I don’t understand. Can different frequencies become one or do they always distinctly remain themselves un-interrupted, everlasting and whole but trying not so for they never met. 

What is the point in all our separation and longing to remain apart consistently without ever a place to meet? 

It is so painful. Why must we remain such?

 Can miss communicated animosity build harmony or similar wavelengths, does perpetual distinction and separation produce a whole. 

Does completion between two separates create a solution that we so desperately yearn for? 

Or does remaining apart—the only answer perpetually ingrained in ones own self or unit—never stepping outside alone. 

Maybe crossing the barrier to the other sea is right. Where you know, no one has want of me. Perhaps you cannot understand, what stepping and crossing and realizing the other sand will truly bring. Perhaps you can be a rope or a string that will begin a bridge for generations unseen. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then let me throw my string across and see. For if I but fail at least I will know that I did, instead of not testing the experiment and sitting idly by, wondering what my little string would have done for a person, a people and why…I feel so desperately weak and tired and useless as a string, but maybe bringing other strings will build a better bridge. Oh if only people could see what my little string did…and what theirs could have been.

- Sara Jarman