Bliss
by James Joseph Brown I found it this year, not a place on the map, but a way of walking through the world, making my way through cobblestone streets, into the courtyards of centuries old brick and stone churches, lazy leaves blossoming, strong spirits, the full, joyful tears threatening just below the brims of my eyelids, as if I had been filled like a teakettle being brought to a boil, after sitting on a frozen stove all my life, not knowing how to become warm. Forty years in a house without power, living in cold water, day after day, as the years went by, not knowing there was any other way to live, and then to feel that water slowing warming, and to think, well this will get cold again, it’s barely been lukewarm, but then to feel it brought to a boil and to feel the lid pop and the delicious warmth and the pressure finally released and to know, this is what I’ve been missing. No wonder I could barely hold back. I told Andrius, I feel completely content, at peace, for once in my life. He smiled, put one hand on my shoulder, looked deeply into my eyes. His eyes were the same as mine, the exact same shape, in this country of cousins, except his were brown, since he was half Armenian. He was only half Lithuanian too, like me, but the genes are strong in this part of the world. I can spot my own kind from across any crowded airport. There are very few of us left in the world, after wars, genocide, mass deportations and migrations brought us to the brink of extinction. But here we were like a miracle and I had found myself, the world and Andrius looked right into the center of me and said in Lithuanian there is a word that means all those things, do you know it? I shook my head, it was taking some time for it all to come back to me. Polaima, he said. Polaima, I repeated, weighing the word on my tongue. I sat on a bench in front of the church, while lazy flower blossoms fell from the trees above me. Andrius snapped my picture. Polaima, I said. When I got back to the States, I rode my brother’s bike through my hometown and everything looked brighter, more beautiful. I hadn’t been able to explain to Andrius, that when I was growing up, in this
128
Santa Fe Literary Review