A quick check of my phone—no messages from her. I know there won’t be any, it’s just a habit.
When the first bombs shuddered our windows and everything was in a mess, we were all too afraid, too fragile. But while I panicked about emergency kits and traffic jams, my friend from Kherson wrote me about Russian soldiers prowling under her windows, no food in the fridge and the stinky garbage she was too scared to carry to the bins outside. The shock of it coming my way was paralyzing.
So I stopped writing back.
I wish I asked her if I could, somehow, get her out of there. I wish I could at least comfort her with words of hope. And she never mentioned it either. One day, she disappeared from the chat. Her Instagram page hasn’t been updated for almost two years now. I know what may have happened. I can imagine it too clearly from the necrologies we get daily.
And I keep checking my phone—stupid, pathetic compulsion of a coward.