A plantation girl brought me a cup of water
And I told her without restraint about my excitement
My daughter, like a fish, says meow and is looking for a husband
My wife is like a pearl looking for someones neck and thread
My son was killed during another war
My brother was shot according to laws that don’t exist
Where are the plantations from? I thought and looked around
Insane saliva flowed from my lips
I looked at my so called hands
I saw that I did not have a cup of water in my hands.
I have nothing at all except a sick stomach
One of my comrades in misfortune advised me to drink less cold water
He said: “You never know, you’ll still catch a cold, you won’t be able to work, and you will be thrown into the ravine exhausted”
I pulled a holey hat over my ears, took a shovel and began to dig a Siberian winter forest
Someone at a distance chopped spruce and dragged them to the barn (in general, thats what we were ordered to)
I began to dig a hole with all my might and then lay down in it and fell asleep as if
I had never been there
Finally, I crossed myself three times with a healthy mental finger
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Mykyta Ryzhykh (he/him) Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian Magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, TheNewVerse News, Acorn Haiku Journal, The Wise Owl, and others.