(flow of consciousness)

Today it drizzles in Kherson, with tiny raindrops falling taciturnly on wrecked roadway with big and small pits and puddles. This time the fall doesn`t say its sad farewells to summer, it mourns the dead Kherson dwellers. It mourns 118 dead and badly injured kids from the Kherson region…It mourns hundreds of someone` mothers and grandmothers…It mourns the Ukrainian soldiers… buried in boundless Kherson steppes…Today the rain sprinkles with bloody spots of innocent victims with their souls soaring and seeking something nearby…

The present-day Kherson has its own rhythm of death. It lasts 160-180 seconds…That is the time between the arrivals of artillery shells. Is it much or little? That is almost eternity…

160 seconds is enough to get to the closest bomb shelter…

160 seconds is enough to smoke a cigarette with fitfully fidgeting fingers …

160 seconds is enough to take all documents and to run away from an apartment…

160 seconds is enough to put down the blaze not far from your house…

160 seconds is enough to save somebody`s screwy cat.

160 seconds is enough to call an ambulance and it will arrive to save your neighbor…

160 seconds is enough to leave your rayon and to get to a safer one…

They shoot the same square 6-8 times…not more…

And after that, the time comes for a cautious comeback to an astonishingly intact apartment…

To the right, the smoking ruins of a kindergarten, to the left – the somber remnants of a secondary school…

The wreckage of Kherson State University looms among the spirits of former students seeking the memories of their youth just over there…

Barbarians of the XXI century…

On half-broken benches, shimmer the faded eyes of Hola Prystan, Oleshky and Tavriisk refugees…

They have not seen their houses for more than a year and stare at the left-bank Dnipro seeking hope…

However, hope never dies in this old stronghold of Ukrainian Cossack liberty. It just asks, “Don`t forget about Kherson Oblast! We shall overcome all of it, come hell or high water! But for God`s sake, when will you help us to get liberated?”