The title of the piece derives from the first line of a poem by Osip Mandelshtam: "Preserve my words forever for their aftertaste of misfortune and smoke..." / "Сохрани мою речь навсегда за привкус несчастья и дыма...".

Ekaterina came accross some lines from the poem copied out into a greeting card addressed to her by a family friend, congratulating her with her high school graduation. Searching her archives of saved greeting cards, she began selecting, scanning and vectorizing pieces of poems and lyrics copied out into these cards according to russian custom and tradition, gifted to her by various family members and friends over the years. Transferring the now unintellogble poems onto primed canvas, she preserves their words and yet anonymizes them, voids them of meaning in the process.