by Skaidrite Stelzer
The drone that killed one-year-old Anhelina circled above a park before dropping on to a nearby path and exploding. The shrapnel killed six people in Nova Vodolaha, a small town outside Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv. The girl’s mother also died. Pictures from the immediate aftermath show Anhelina belted carefully into her pram, the laces on her peach-coloured shoes tied into neat bows. She was dressed in a warm bear-shaped maroon romper with small felt ears. Her tiny hands were stained with blood. —The Telegraph (UK), October 21, 2026
To hide the graphic and traumatic nature of the infant's body slumped in the stroller, news outlets, social platforms, and officials applied a blurred box or white square over the graphic sections of the image before distributing it.
When the face of the infant
lying dead in her stroller is blocked
by a white square to keep us from weeping,
we may weep more than ever,
suddenly realizing that the square
is a mirror
as the signals of hope become blocked
by generals just following orders.
No warning to be given.
Nothing to see here.
The final erasure of childhood.
The infant just learning to smile.
Skaidrite Stelzer’s poetry has appeared in Glass, Midway Journal, The Baltimore Review, Storm Cellar, and many other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Digging a Moose from the Snow was published by Finishing Line Press in 1921. She enjoys watching shifting clouds.
