This text was written by a winner of the 2024 call for feminist essays.
Heavy silence explodes me inside out.
A direct hit destroys the life line under my feet.
In pieces
The blood is fresh and steamy.
Then
The jungle reaches for the pink sky, the colour of the lips of young lovers
clear of missiles.
My daughter belongs to this world.
My empty grave is marked by a beautiful palm, standing like
a sailor from a distant island.
My dust is on the bottom of the ocean, hidden by the sand as a mata ray.
I desire to transform, wake up and get back to earth.
To grasp the sun and dance with my daughter again in the daylight.
2022.
2023.
2024.
…
When I gave birth to Sophia/when Sophia was born, she smelled like the ocean near the icebergs in Greenland where the whales come to reproduce. While pregnant I imagined the amniotic fluid inside the giant mammals and the dark blue ocean’s plankton wrapping them with its honesty. The plankton is the reason for water’s crazy smell – the life that fills the grand liquid. Sophia brought this smell on her skin when she d left my womb and entered this world. The odour was intoxicating, heavy and delicious. To die for. I felt it in my mouth and in my bones. I asked a friend if all newborns smelt like this, she confirmed. I did not believe her for a second. I have instantly recognized my child though I haven’t recognized myself multiple times since she was born. Through the pain of the healing scar on my belly, I have whispered all my tender prayers into her, desperate to weave a protective net with words around her.
We live in Kyiv.
Sophia sleeps, I am shamelessly writing this text near her. I am sitting at the edge of our bed. My laptop is placed on a flannel sheet. The little one is positioned so that the blue light doesn’t get on her face. Timid sunlight scratches through the window glass like a homeless cat with a cold. I am wearing my cozy robe. My daughter and I sleep together, it’s good for us. Not just ok but good. Her palms are relaxed so are mine. I committed myself to getting her cover back on, whereas she committed herself to getting it off. We are a team like that. Today the clock was changed to the winter time.
I guard the sleep of my baby as a hellhound, as an angel, who stops everyone from approaching. I throw wild beast gazes at anybody who dares to possibly wake her up. I constantly scan the environment for disturbances. When I am picking her up, I do it gently yet forcefully, my movement is invested. My typing is also quiet, pianissimo, although normally I would be banging on the keypad sharply and fiercely. Staccato used to be my thing more than legato, even though I am a light sleeper myself I bought my first earplugs when I was a student, because my roommate in the dormitory was productive at night, studying, typing. I could not help but pay attention and listen, not to typing per se, but to the thought flow behind it. My baby so far doesn’t mind me typing. She sleeps through my writing process. This morning is quiet for both of us.
My friend, who has been living in Lithuania since the start of the full-scale invasion, bought the scalp of a dead cow at an internet auction to decorate her wall. It is encrusted with flower blue and diamond-like crystals and vivid mosaics. The festivity of colour surrounds three holes, dark and empty – the mouth and two eyes. When I concentrate my eyes on it, the darkness behind the bones grasps my throat, suffocating me.
I ask her:
– Isn’t it too scary to look at for you?
– I don’t think so, you know that I’ve always been interested in darkness.
– True, more than me. But now .. I don’t have a choice, do I?
– What do you mean?
I am gazing at the frame of the mosaic around the cow’s mouth and her eyes. Each frame executes, cuts off body parts like a medieval guillotine. My arm, my leg, my voice. It randomly consumes the warmth away from my body. I am turning into the hollow myself.
I answer:
– Sometimes it seems to me that all I see is this darkness. It’s a shame, because it does not suit me. Seriously, does it suit anyone? I doubt that anyone can carry this sadness and tiredness with any taste for them. Static, bitter, impossible to change. I don’t like myself this way. And I lack any resolve to fight it.
I am not enough.
In the middle of the night the air raid siren goes off and moans obnoxiously. Once it penetrates my body, it echoes continuously through my DNA. Now that my daughter is sleeping nearby, I can cuddle with her, get my body back to life. I am checking several telegram chats to understand the reason for the siren.
–- Drones, too far.
I once again breath in her smell and, forever thankful, dive into my sweet ocean of bliss.
Right.
I am placing my palm on Sophia’s tummy, it’s slowly and gently moving up and down. So calm and rhythmic – she knows how to breathe better than I do. On the green wall the shadow from the tree branches are dancing in the streetlight. Since being a kid I don’t like total darkness in the room where I sleep so I never shut the curtains. Sophia has been getting used to my kind of darkness since her first days here.
In a second (even less?) –I did not blink in between those two moments – the pink light from the air-defence missile fills the night outside.
Boom!
Explosion.
Somewhere very close. The car alarms go off immediately.
One more explosion.
In a rush I am picking up Sophia and running into the corridor, then the next corridor outside. We don’t have two walls in our apartment. It happens that I manage not to wake her up. How is that possible? I am holding her close like a good mother who has really put in an effort to rock her to sleep. That very moment I have two faces – all my tenderness for my child, all my strength and rage for the world.
What should I do? Where can I find a/the place that feels safe?
I am coming back to my senses in the corridor. With my sneakers on, a night gown and a shawl, which my partner put on my shoulders Idon’tknowhen. Indian summer air, fresh yet warm, hugs my ankles. Scabby walls are the same light green colour as the walls in my school biology classroom. Old elevators are sleeping, as is the rest of the building. I am sure that the windows are trembling in all apartments though. Has everyone else gotten used to this new normal more than I have? We are on the third floor, the building has nine. I am covering the eyes of my baby girl with a swaddle.
One more explosion.
My daughter is sleeping. Just in case I am rubbing my breasts into her mouth, while singing something merry about the heroes who free the sky from evil.
At that same moment my consciousness freezes an image. The forefront is dead and there is a bony maw behind it, with the scream desperate to get into this world. The room I see is deserted, with tender tulle touching softly the wooden floor. Death is entering the room from the corners and catches the scream before it transforms into sound.
I am caught in the loop between death and scream.
I am moving my lips and whispering the prayer in the language only I and my baby girl understand. Does that mean that I don’t believe in g/God, but I believe in prayer?
I am only certain about one thing: I don’t want my fear to get into the breastmilk.
Sophia is deep in her dreams. I clung to the theory that if my face does not reveal my dread, my baby girl will not pick it up. She will not get scared. The only thing I can do is try and make it happen.
After minutes, half an hour, less my partner says:
–- Vidbij.1
I am dragging us back to bed. I am lying near her, breathing her in but I am away. Away from my baby girl. I hate myself for this.
In scholarly literature this condition is referred to as shadow. Shadows can be different of course.
In September near Kyiv peatlands were burning. All the buildings around us were sucked into a parallel realm by the dense smog. At the beginning of the war I falsely hoped that this kind of low visibility would prevent rockets and drones from flying. Alas.
It was too hard and it made no sense to breathe. I put a wet sheet on my windows. My granny used to live in Sakhalin where volcanoes were active, the wet sheet was aimed to stop ashes and polluted air from entering the room. The sunlight was working its way to earth. Despite its effort the shadows were misshapen and awkward. They faded away in seconds. I was this kind of shadow. No confidence in my essence whatsoever. I was finding myself in the middle of the crowd, full of plans, completing tasks, as a responsible adult, but I didn’t feel safe. I remained in the loop.
My body was powerless, although it functioned. Blood and lymph were streaming and transiting. The tension froze in an exotic pattern, fracturing the ice. I was capable of noticing, yet not capable of comprehending and reversing the process of becoming rigid and cold. Desperate to melt the ice or at least to crack it. The springs in the depths were dead, not a single oxygen bubble getting out. Zilch.
All I needed was one bubble which would help release the scream.
It took five days and five nights before I woke up at night to feed my daughter and felt safe again. I had my body, my body had me. That was real happiness.
When I look at my life in retrospect, I can see the monumental monolith of peace. I am questioning whether it has ever really existed and refuse to believe that warmth and happiness I had in my childhood belong to the lying episode of history. I grew up in the suburbs of Rivne in Western Ukraine, in a panel building. The living room had a standard yellow carpet, the bookshelves full of books and the TV. That’s where we as a family spent much of our time together. The best time. Me and mom dancing and my grandpa smiling and looking at us. My mom still lives in Rivne. The apartment is gone though and so is the carpet after my grandpa’s long illness. When my mom visits, I still long to watch a movie with her from the start till the end.
My grandma and grandpa died before the war. I am happy about that.
The war should have an age censor. No person who survived one great war should face another within one lifetime. The frustration kicks in when I vaguely imagine the day when I will be explaining the war to my daughter. It’s important to get this one right.
My life has the before and after. In every conversation with the outside world I am hiding my sentiment about my precious before deep down, in an empty dark maw that drags along with me like a bff. Will it stay with me and then one day the city will be rebuilt on the ruins and prosper like Troy or is it just a fragile mandala which will forever vanish with the wind? Who knows (I don’t).
I was never focused on becoming a mother. Now how could I starve for something that is unfamiliar and lasting? It conquered my freedom in seconds. I already know how to cradle my child to get oxytocin working for me and get me on the cloud of bliss. It blocks the noise even the one created by war. If such love exists then everything is possible, the fear steps away. I know how to feel deprived to the core and function. I just talk less and search for warm liquid food like soup to nurture myself and continue on giving to my baby girl. To tell myself: Mama, you can lose a million times and still do it. To tell my daugther: Mama is with you.
In between worlds we will find the place for the dance with my daughter.
We will move freely and with amplitude and pleasure.
We will get lots of oxygen and space, our bodies will be well rested,
we will have strength and time.
I want to be with her as long as possible.
To follow her look, to point fingers at the beauty of the world, to be alive.
To wash out with my tears the bitter and bad-tasting.
And some things are just to be forgotten, not to get poisoned by.
2022.
2023.
2024.
..?
- “The air alarm is over.” ↩︎
The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the position of the members of the organisation.