You are growing up without noticing it.

Now you are one year old, and it seems that there are no such important things as your mother and that bright toy that hangs so invitingly on a string.

Now you are five, and you are running around the yard, trying to hide from the goose, which really doesn’t like your red hat and wants to take it off at any cost. And when the goose doesn’t come back from the lake one evening, you secretly celebrate, even though your grandmother is sad because there will be no goose to cook for the holiday.

You are six, and you are going to school with a backpack. There are many new friends, books and the first teacher, who gives warmth and even makes you want to be like her when you grow up.

Here you are eight and your parents bring a screaming baby, saying that this is now your brother, and you are an older sister. But why, if you only wish to play with dolls, not babysit.

You are fifteen, and you are overtaken by teenage rebellion. Quarrels and screams at home do not stop. That’s why you run away to write poetry, to talk to people who understand your pains and experiences, who understand and guide your writing – maybe something will come out of you.

Here you are seventeen, and you go many kilometers away to live in another city, start all over again. “Hi, I’m Polina.” But what is behind it? What do you bring to the world? 

 You’re nineteen, and you’re on fire with writing. Words flow from your fingers, become lines, twist into poems, and you just can’t stop this flow.  

Here you are twenty-three, and it is like a brick on your head. “Polina, they are gone” – and uncontrollable crying into the phone. And you didn’t even have time to say goodbye because in the morning you were discussing the elections, and now you have to go to arrange funerals of your closest people. And in a month another one – because the heart of the brother stopped, the younger brother, that little screaming baby. 

And now you’re twenty-six. Your country has been in a bloody war for 8 years. Someone somewhere decided that you, your relatives and friends should not exist. Just because you have a trident on your passport. And you don’t know if you wake up tomorrow. Every day is like the last. Every breath may be the last. Every thought may be the last. 

And for some reason now there are not enough words to describe everything that the injured soul keeps. The same as the houses crippled by the explosions, which now stand burnt, staining everything around with dust and blood.

How long will you be able to live?

But for now, you count every day and feel glad that you are alive.