Anastasia Glushko
The first time I met Danylo, he was leaning against the wall of a volunteer center, rolling a cigarette with steady hands. He looked up when I passed, his eyes catching mine in a way that made my steps falter for just a second.
I had come to help organize supplies—medical kits, blankets, canned food. Anything to keep people alive. He was there for a different reason. A soldier waiting to return to the front, caught between two worlds: war and whatever remained of normal life.
“Do you smoke?” he asked, offering me the cigarette before he even lit it. I shook my head.
He lit it anyway, took a slow drag, and exhaled into the cold air.
I was eighteen, living in Kyiv, Ukraine, and we started seeing each other after that. Small moments stolen between bomb alerts and news updates. He told me about the village he came from, about the orchard his grandfather used to tend, about how war had reduced everything he knew to rubble.
“You should leave the city,” he told me once, his voice tight. “Go somewhere safe.”
I laughed bitterly. “Where is safe?”
He didn’t have an answer, just looked at me with something that felt like regret.
One night, he kissed me in the stairwell of my apartment building, the distant thud of artillery shaking the windows. It was a quiet kiss, but not a hesitant one. His fingers traced the curve of my jaw as if he was memorizing me.
“You’ll come back?” I asked, hating myself for the question.
He rested his forehead against mine. “I’ll try.”
And then he was gone.
Days passed, then weeks. His messages came less frequently, and each time I saw an unknown number calling, my stomach twisted into knots. Then, one morning, silence. My messages went unread. The news was endless—numbers, locations, shifting front lines.
One evening, a message arrived. Not from him. Three words from an unfamiliar sender: "He saved many."
I shattered. I screamed. I broke everything I could lift, then curled up on the floor and wished time would swallow me whole.
But the next morning, I got up. Put on my jacket. Stepped outside. Because if he fought to keep this world alive, then I had to live in it.