The Memory Exercise
It's a collection of illustrated memories based on photos from my childhood.
The mulberry didn’t burn away. It grew old, so they just chopped it down. The train pulls the wagons, the rumble may be heard for miles. It’s a 40-minute walk to the train station. We took the newspapers, dipped them into nitrate solution, my brother and I wanted to make a smoke rocket. I’m watching Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead in the old Palace of Culture, the city is on fire, the streets are silent. The blast set ringing in my ears. I was standing by the window in the kitchen. We set fire to the newspaper and tucked it into a Coke bottle. It blew up.
Sometimes I do this exercise. I close my tired eyes with my palms, and the memories begin to emerge. Boredom at PE the day before the new year, we reached the train station with Zheka, heavy snow on the streets, I see that through the kitchen window on Saturday, killing monsters in the dungeons, train wagons rumble in the summer again, seeing slag peaks from the balcony, a game for two on one monitor after school, former movie theater and church in the park, lion sculptures on the stairs, dead onions on the windowsill.
Ukraine, Rubizhne city, 9 years before the russian invasion.
Sometimes I do this exercise. I close my tired eyes with my palms, and the memories begin to emerge. Boredom at PE the day before the new year, we reached the train station with Zheka, heavy snow on the streets, I see that through the kitchen window on Saturday, killing monsters in the dungeons, train wagons rumble in the summer again, seeing slag peaks from the balcony, a game for two on one monitor after school, former movie theater and church in the park, lion sculptures on the stairs, dead onions on the windowsill.
Ukraine, Rubizhne city, 9 years before the russian invasion.
Translated from Ukrainian by Oleksandra Saulyak.
***
