Thank you to Rochelle, as always, for Friday Fictioneers.
Poet, Hero
I left.
Half-way across the Atlantic I felt no relief, just guilt, and so very much regret.
Yesterday Dmytro and I drank Turkish coffee, ate pastry I knew in another time would taste extraordinary, while we tried to laugh, pretend the worst was not impending, and interweave our fingers as if we could form an unbreakable bond.
When he handed me several leatherbound journals–“for safe-keeping”– handwritten in words I couldn’t read, I bit my lip hard to stop myself from demanding, needing.
He shrugged. “I was a poet. Now I am a soldier. It is time to make my pretty words true.”
end
There’s a satisfying roundness to this, and an unmistakeble resonance with terrible current events as poets take up guns
One of the safest farewells ever. Echos of the Franko Spanish Civil, I think. Relevant today as madness breakout across Europe.
Excellent Sascha. Hard to process the way people’s lives’ have been turned upside down in Ukraine, civilians becoming armed fighters and families torn apart. Let’s hope it can be ended peacefully soon.
I, too, loved this, Sascha. How many poets had to put aside their pens?
Wonderful
Well-said–and timely!
The word ‘End’ chilled me, to many poets have died in wars
Beautiful 💙
Dear Sascha,
This one hits me at the core. I know two young musicians in Belarus who are being called to service in the Russian army. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht80XPusIzc My heart is breaking for these two. One married with a child. The other planning to marry soon.
Timely and well-written story.
Shalom,
Rochelle