To push from

I keep forgetting how the pace of living picks up when it gets warm. Springtime has truly sprung with action, plans, and the long-awaited return of electricity. I can walk fast now, just as I am used to. I have solid ground underneath my feet to push from. There are more places I can be, and I often wish I could be in many places at once. Just please not the metro station again, not another avalanche of drones, let me disassociate into being busy, into doing something, anything other than recalling the photograph of the child killed by russian drones in Odesa, other than grieving, anything other than predicting what my next survival challenge will be.

Let it be summer, a mix of heat, suffering and exhilaration. Let it be the summertime power outages, lifetimes compressed and melted into several months. And of course potatoes, because it’s the end of times, and we need to put potatoes into black earth to survive. Mother wants me to help her plant potatoes, the one thing that reliably saved generations of my ancestors from famine.

The following week is remembrance Sunday. I tend to the graves where my ancestors rest. They outnumber me, each with their particular grief. Wind blows through the graveyard, and shocks of freshly green grass spring here and there, and I think of people who can’t go where their ancestors rest, the graveyards that were occupied by russia, the graveyards that were created by russia. Created is the wrong word.

I think of the three handfuls of soil I tossed over the coffin of Ivan almost two years ago. I remember his face, pale and covered in small cuts, in an open casket, the last time I ever saw his face up close. I remember us working endless reports as coworkers, putting monitoring indicators together, writing about results, measuring impact. I can’t measure impact the way he could. He was the monitoring and evaluation expert. None of the indicators mattered, and yet they did, because even in war, we must be accountable and transparent. And there was the result - Ivan, killed. So insufficient, the three handfuls of soil I measured to Ivan’s grave. That’s the tradition - friends, loved ones, and colleagues each contribute three handfuls of soil to the grave of the fallen defender. Three gunshots salute his sacrifice.

Today, the earth is fresh and vividly framed by green. Feet carry me forward before I’ve decided where I’m going. There is dirt under my nails.

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