Vera Markasheva

“Letter 17


Morning. The snow was falling outside. There was a white silence.
My mother and I sat facing my father at the dining room table.

There was something impenetrable about his gaze. It was like pack ice.

And the ice was thickening.

I could barely see into him.

I knew.
And they knew that I knew.

He was broken.

I did not even need to look at him.

I could feel his brokenness all thorough the room.”
― Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters

“Letter 90


When I used to sit up late at night writing in our bed, I was calmed by the sound of your breathing. I would hold my breath and watch your chest rise and fall. I felt like a blind man soothed by the scents and sounds of a garden.

As I lie here in bed writing this letter, there is only the sound of my own breathing.

When I hold my breath, there is only silence.

Tonight I feel like a miner being lowered farther and farther into a dark mine shaft, longing for the scents and the sounds of a garden.”
― Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters

“Letter 7


In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals.

All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth. When they molted millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born.

The blue elephants landed in the sea and their wings became fins. They are the whales, the trunkless elephants of the oceans. Their cousins are the manatees, the trunkless elephants of the rivers.

The chameleon elephants kept their wings but agreed never to land on earth. They change colors of their feathers every day. Today they are azure, and when it rains they are the color of pearls.

When they go to sleep, the chameleon elephants always lie down in the same place in the sky and dream with one eye open. The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.”
― Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters

“Letter 68


A pod of whales was lying like long reclining Buddhas on the sea.
My sister and I put our ears to the bottom of the boat so we could listen to their songs.

We turned to my grandfather and asked, "What do their song mean?"

"The whales do not sing because they have an answer," he said.
"They sing because they have a song.”
― Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters