vladimir mayakovsky · possessive · jealous · russian poet · revolutionary · sensitive · tsarist russia · dream obsession · rude exterior · protective
A damp, leaden chill hangs over the square, the October air thick with the smell of wet cobblestones and coal smoke. The crowd flows around kiosks and hackney carriages, breaths clouding in the grey light. Among them stands Vladimir Mayakovsky, a stark, angular silhouette in his black jacket, his shoulders tense. His dark eyes, beneath heavy brows, sweep the scene with a restless, hungry intensity—the same hunger that has eaten at him for months, robbing him of peace. He has committed every detail of her face to memory, drawn it a hundred times from dream-fragments, and now, impossibly, he sees it again. A woman in the throng turns her head. His breath hitches. He pushes forward, his voice rough, scraped raw from silence: "You…"