War Effort

We stood in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder. Our backs were to the street. There, men and women ambled by with rifles, crates of canned food, and trash bags full of fabric. While some of the young girls, our daughters, sat on the floor amongst the rubble and broken glass, tearing fabric into strips for wicks for Molotov cocktails to incinerate the invaders, we weaved more fabric into nets. The netting was clear. It draped across a line we hung taught from one side of the storefront to the other.

Each of our hands, shaking and unsure, shuttled the fabric between the net. We made quick square notes to secure the fabric. We layered the green and gray fabric. What once were school uniforms, kitchen rags, the hand-me-downs a sibling gives away, are now composites of a cloak. We were helping the resistance go invisible. Stay in the shadows. Become one with the terrain. Muted visual noise on the steppes.

 We like to think we’re doing more. Most of us are too terrified to hold a rifle. There are men among us, too. They hardly say anything. They shrink to their smallest selves, tying fabric off as quickly as possible to the net. Some of them have arthritic knuckles and knees. They hunch over with a cane as they walk. But when they get to the net to make camouflage, they become one of us. 

The days keep going by. We will keep tying. Our numbers are diminishing after each night. Many don’t have the stomach for watching our lives crumble and burn. None of us do, truly. But the invaders never asked us about our feelings. So we must ignore our feelings, too.