by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
I live only for the child, Daryna. He’ll never ride his father’s shoulders again. Our wide bed makes me cry. But this is my country. Someone must pick clean the soil sown with bullets, missiles, mines. Find the brainwashed children, the looted paintings and Scythian gold—some older than the Russian empire. I will finish my husband’s war, our war. In that, I may find purpose. In that, I may find purpose.
You are foolish, Nadiya. The sky is thick with missiles; our army is thin. And even if the Russians leave, like vampires, their lust will survive. They’ll come back to seize our farms, our ports, our women. We are soldiers’ wives; do you think they’ll shower us with roses? No, my children and I must go. I want to forget cities smashed to pebbles. Winters lit by candles. Men turned to crosses. I want everything new. I want everything new.
Author's Note: Fighting Russian aggression has taken the lives of many, many Ukrainian soldiers and created many war widows—often young women with children, who are devastated. Support groups have sprung up to help them cope. In this poem, I imagined two possible ways of coping: staying in Ukraine to help rebuild it, and leaving Ukraine to start a completely new life somewhere else. I also invented two women, Nadiya and Daryna, to personify the two approaches.
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Topical Poetry, Consequence, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Sparks of Calliope, and pacificREVIEW.