From the cycle "Frescos"

Drying
How easy it is to quarrel with his wife because of a trifle - try to reconcile later.

We rave the forest with a walk, ahead - a quiet child. Early spring. In the ravines there is still snow. We rise on the hill. And then we are met by a lonely hazel bush, full of everything ... with the steering wheel. Real drying with poppy seeds hanging on thin branches. We stand, not believing the eyes. The place is deserted. On the bitch a note: "Help yourself to kind people." Children's handwriting, paper in a cage. We begin to laugh. We start jumping around the bush. We do not find words. Who invented you, a miracle? We ate then with great pleasure only a few drying, so that others could share with us this nameless, small gift of love.

Every spring I remember this and I know that I will remember this all my life. He will stand in front of my eyes, this wonderful hazel bush in the spring forest.

DOG'S HEART

In our village there are many dogs left by summer residents after summer. Most go astray in hungry flocks and run around in search of food, but that's not all. For eight months, I saw a dog that went out on the road opposite a boarded-up dacha and waited day and night for its owners. Barely heard someone's footsteps, appeared her clever thoroughbred muzzle with such a hope in her eyes that soon pass by her became unbearable. Several times one compassionate guy tried to take her to himself, and every time she ran away from him and continued to carry her vigilant watch with a collar and dragging leash ... In any weather, noticing everyone passing by. So passed and winter and spring. And in the summer the owners returned, and it was necessary to see the dog's happiness when she walked through the village with the master, who treated her like a hated burden, shouting and kicking her without any reason. Someone will say that I'm sorry for the dog, but I felt sorry for the owner, he would have her dog's heart.

This fall, the dog does not see anything, I heard that she was killed, I do not know.

LATER
Everything is loved afterwards. When you realize that this will not happen again. The simplest, most unknown, banal moments of life will not be repeated, which have remained somewhere in the shadow of events ... Oh, this "boring", "passing", "killed" "between business" life, hello, I am guilty before you! Is it because you look like a supersonic plane: here flew, and the sound then ...

 
Maxim Yakovlev
From the cycle "Frescos"