Alai Oli feat. Evgeniya Popova - После войны
текст песни

From the White Nights until August, threads of roads stretch out.
August—back when we still had Crimea.
Our first meeting.
A hurricane and a downpour.
We sit on the shore, embracing,
As if in the aftermath of war.
We are freezing, yet lack the strength to return to them.

I felt uneasy with you right from the start.
But I am not looking for comfort.
Returning to St. Petersburg feels like stepping back into a past life.
You said, "Come stay with me."
My Tauride Palace has turned into a golf club.
I wanted to shave off my dreadlocks, get "Mr. Durden" tattooed
on the back of my head,
and scream: "You all fell in love with the wrong person!"

I wanted to endlessly prove my strength—to you, and to myself.
I write to Durga just to keep from losing my mind.
To detach from my body, to command: "Recede, darkness!"
To ask myself: "Why am I doing this?"
Reaching out toward you...
running away from you.

Now—freeze.
And lean back.
As if we’d flown off the highway...
and somehow caught our balance.
Teetering on the edge...
of a sheer cliff.
On the brink of an abyss.
Do not reach for me.

I don't know what it meant to you—but I considered you my friend.
I wanted to be with you—or perhaps...
to break free from captivity.
But a prison can be an entire universe.
A castle, above which dragons spiral in a dance.
What happened there, at the very end?
I still don't know.
And I have no desire to figure it out.
But I remember driving along the Ring Road in winter with a broken heater.
Remember the lines freezing on my cheeks.
A lightbulb explodes.
A train window shatters and falls...
right onto me.
I decided—just to spite you—to live a million happy lives all within this one.
To steer clear of the otherworldly.
To transform everything you taught me into love.
I found your letter here the other day.
I locked it away in a safe.
But even seven locks wouldn't be enough to hold it.

Now freeze
And lean back—
As if we’d flown off the highway
And caught our balance
On the edge
Of a sheer cliff,
At the brink of the abyss.
Do not reach for me.