«How things are in Kharkiv» Day 108 a.l.t. — after the liberation of the territory)

Friends who left the city earlier are gradually coming back to Kharkiv—to get their winter things and go away again. No one is under any illusion any more. People in the city are like forest birds and animals in the approach of winter: some fly to warmer places, some go into hibernation, some stock up and prepare to sit out the cold in their dens, and some will be facing winter just as it is in an open place.

While I was helping a friend move his things, I met a woman in the elevator in his building.

«Do you understand what’s happening?» she suddenly asked me in russian. «Do you understand that this is the end?»

Without waiting for my answer, she goes on: «It's because people stopped believing in God. And they the things they do… Oh! Tell me, where have you seen that a man can marry a man? There’s you and there’s me and it’s immediately obvious what the difference between us. But that, what’s that? Where’s that going?»

«Yes,» I said, agreeing, «the difference between us is pretty huge.»

Meanwhile, my mom found some photos from Sarzhyn Yar, which was hit recently. For a long time, she gazed at a photograph of a woman lying in a pool of blood.

«Why is blood so bright red?» she asked me. «Is that possible?»

«Of course it’s possible,» I answer, «if it’s arterial blood. Arterial blood is bright red, full of oxygenated hemoglobin.»

Yevhen, Kharkiv