I had left behind such a nice guy in Kyiv to come live with Dad. Then I lost Dad to meet you. Now I’ve lost you to find myself. Don’t argue, that’s the way it is. I have to find my own way, not wait around to be saved. I’m good. I coped. I fell asleep. In my dreams, Dad was shouting at me, and I plunged a knife into his hand. Mum had bought a large white kitchen tablecloth. A large bloodstain was now spreading across it. He tried to remove his hand from the table, but couldn’t, so he scrunched the tablecloth into a ball and lifted it away with his hand. Shame. It was a nice tablecloth.

Afterwards, I dreamed of Grandma. She stared at me angrily and then lunged and stabbed me in the back with that same knife. My legs wouldn’t move. A terrible pain shot through me. I span around and shot her a reproachful look. “Grandma, do you have no compassion?!” She again drove the knife into me, but from below, into my vagina, and opened her toothless mouth as if to sing. I woke up moist with excitement. My lower abdomen was aglow. It was painful, sweet, and wet. I removed the pillow from under my head and placed it between my legs and squeezed my knees tightly, moving my hips and enjoying the friction. Again I fell asleep and I dreamt that you and I used our hands to catch a small fish in a puddle in the middle of Dad’s room. The room was still intact, although pieces of wet plaster occasionally dropped from the ceiling.

I woke up. The morning shelling had begun. With nothing else to do, I trudged down to the basement. It had by then become a chilly, filthy dungeon with only two remaining inhabitants: a small silver-haired, snub-nosed old woman and a thin, dishevelled, rheumy-eyed man of about forty. Both were seated on their beds wrapped in blankets watching the quivering lights: a saucer of sunflower oil and two burning wicks stood on the table.

A large red mongrel was huddled under the man’s bed. Probably the source of his allergies. Overjoyed at my arrival, she jumped up, wagging her tail. I stroked her fur, which was dirty and tousled like her owner’s hair.

Mitya drank and never dried out. Otherwise, he might long before have been press-ganged by the militias and joined the ranks of the immortal regiment in the sky. He evidently drank to avoid that outcome. He was no less enthused by my arrival than his dog. He invited me to sit next to him on his cot and showed me a thick notebook filled with dates and addresses.

“Look, this is every strike in our area.”

“Why?”