For Ukraine

from 03.05.22

“Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”

I keep thinking about these brazen words that a Ukrainian woman spoke to armed Russian soldiers as they invaded her country last week.
She spoke contemptuously, her assault laced with profanity and insults. And yet, in this confrontation I see a glimpse of her fearsome resolve and perhaps even a measure of disguised compassion. At the very least, she understands the whole wretched reality of this war. Her home will become a battleground. Her neighbors will become warriors. Her streets will be filled with ash and carnage. Her life will become a prayer for survival. And yet, she is thinking to the end of it all when the final outcome is decided. When either way nameless corpses will lie among the ruins unattended by their mothers. When families will return and find nothing left of the lives they knew. When sunken faces will remember their innocence only as a hazy dream. When the world will tally up the cost and inevitably decide it was not worth it. She is thinking to the end and imagining sunflowers springing up like tombstones to account for each life. Springing up from the rubble like the unconquerable Ukrainian spirit. And then perhaps the world will see and remember that it was meant to be a garden and that our weapons serve better as plows.