“It’s the 39th day of an 8-year war that lasted centuries,”—how Ukrainians count the days on Twitter.

Yesterday, the invaders left the Red Forest. They were determined to fulfill the order, “To solve the Ukrainian question.” In the mysteries of the Universe, I am amazed how every generation of my family is a question to be solved… rather than resolving the secrets of the fabric that gives rhythm and composition to the world.

Повітряна тривога

So much of what is happening is lost in translation. Like Air Anxiety—the air raid, the Red Forest is, in fact, the color of the fox. Not red. A fox color. Possibly on a trampoline. Most likely, a color of Lys Mykyta, a color of Reynard the Fox. Mischievous, clever. The rust-colored forest protects Ukrainians after we spent our childhood with air anxiety about the forest near Chernobyl. About the air around us. About the rain traversing the air of anxiety.

The air filled with radioactive isotopes, thoroughly inhaled by working fungi, was my anxiety.

Air anxiety is an intangible precourse to tangible devastation.

My nightmares as a 4-year old about leukemia and radiation poisoning are replaced by kids’ realities in damp basements of Mariupol, next to the bodies of their parents. With no escape, they sit silently, hiding from the Russian peace, the Russian world. Their air anxiety is filled with putrescine.

One can’t see the radiation without a Geiger counter. Those who are not equipped with history can’t see the hate that drives the Russians to erase city after city, to shoot people with their hands tied behind their backs. Burn Ukrainian books and houses.

Even the Chernobyl forest protects Ukrainians now. It’s a symbiosis I did not foresee. I am grateful to the Chernobyl forest.

The Air Anxiety is all around, thousands of miles and 25 years away, it is inside me.•
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