Roman

The world has always moved faster than me. Even in my youth, everything was changing faster than I could comprehend. From independence to Russian- to German- to Russian-occupations and back to independence, I never could keep up. 

I learned to think small. The micro-moments in life are where happiness can be attained. It can be as simple as noticing the brush strokes of light blue left on a church’s wall. It can be as complex as walking along the Irpin River looking for the green plumage of a Blue-cheeked Bee-Eater. The smaller, more seemingly independent of everything else in the world, the more happiness I found.

I wandered through life looking for minutia. I found it everywhere. I found it made life bearable. I found myself lighter, the burden of existence being cast aside for the brush strokes, the green feathers of a migratory bird, the sun’s last light on wispy cirrus clouds. 

I didn’t leave when the invasion happened. By that time I was alone. I had been alone for almost a decade. My neighbors, a young family with three kids, fled. They tried to convince me to go, but I told them the sadness of leaving would kill me before any rockets or rubble. I watch over their oldest daughter’s pet rat now. I have christened him Roman. 

When the rockets begin tearing buildings down, I think about moving to the basement. I think about leaving Roman here, alone. I imagine moving faster than I ever have, and misstepping, and tumbling down the concrete stairwell of my tenement. 

Do you think small in death? Can you concentrate on the holes in the ceiling or the muffled voices around you? Or is it cosmic? In the final moments, are you no longer here? I’ll let you know, on my way to the basement, holding Roman in my pocket, flying down tenement stairs, listening to the city change, like exploding stones.