Journalist and writer Anna Gin writes from Ukraine
Photo: SITA/AP, Andrii Marienko
Police officers in Kharkiv on October 8, 2024 document the impact site of a Russian glide bomb near the body of a slain civilian.
It is raining in Kharkiv. The rain is already cold, autumnal. Such as when the main characters inevitably wrap themselves in a blanket and sit by the fireplace with a glass of wine.
We hardly had any summer rain this year. The drought lasted for several months, farmers and firefighters must have dreamed of a rainy day for a long time.
Such a long-awaited rain, and yet it caught me by surprise. I can’t find the rubber boots, I think I left them at the cottage. Hektor, my Doberman, has grown out of last year’s raincoat, I can’t even fasten it around his neck.
We go for a walk in a dark park. I have no blanket, no fireplace, no wine. Just a wet mood. My feet are wet, it’s dry.
When I was little, my father explained to me how moisture evaporates from the surface of bodies of water, rises up, accumulates and falls back to the ground. And mom always said: “Only heaven grieves for someone, Anja.”
Today I am my mother’s daughter. The sky mourns. For Artőm, for Ostap, for Vitalka.
Heaven is mourning Svetka. She died in March the twenty-second, in front of a store in our neighborhood, in Saltovka. She went for the bread – a shard hit her right in the heart.
Candle. We have been friends since childhood. She was always so smiling and kind, with dimples on her cheeks.
On such gloomy evenings, my father and I always played chess.
— Think about it, daughter, the casting is not suitable here!
God, Dad, I miss you so much. The war took him and my mother away.
Today I unbearably miss everyone whom I buried in these two and a half years.
In the middle of autumn of the twenty-fourth year, Kharkov, rain. The sky behind them is sad. For hundreds, for thousands. Smiling, funny, with dimples.
Honestly, today I don’t even have the strength to hate those monsters who started and support this war. It must be a state of emotional exhaustion.
I think our long-awaited Peremoha, Victory, will surprise everyone as much as this rain.
— Misha, where is the archive champagne, it was in the sideboard!?
— Ľubočka, we drank that back in 2023, remember, during a power outage!?
And such a fun commotion it will be, cheerful and bright.
At least that’s what I want to believe.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
