Dear Kyiv,
It was summer, the first time we met. Last summer, when the haze held the sweat of train cars and ghost towns and the ruins of a cheap and hastily unmade bed; and the sirens held their tongues long enough for us to pretend or even, if only for a handful of minutes before midnight, to forget.
The first time I left, I knew I wasn’t saying goodbye forever.
Six months ago today, I came back to you in winter. You met me at the train station with a darkness enforced by missiles. I had two suitcases and a long list of questions that could only be answered through witness. So those first months, I explored your streets like the body of a new lover. I took long walks through your tangles, learning Ukraine’s story in peeling paint, sprayed graffiti, and architecture that wraps around itself in archeological layers. Inside each courtyard an unexpected scene; and around every corner, a new texture.
When the snow melted, my last fears of being away from Canada did too. In spring, the chestnut trees bloomed, fragrant awakening answers to the near-nightly bombs that didn’t get through. You were waking up too, shaking off your abuse, and as the sun gave back the warmth your abuser had tried to steal, I knew there was nowhere else I’d rather be in this whole beautiful world.
For six months, I have explored you as poem written on the senses. You are shape, you are art, you are colour. You are the prose of guitars and the music of language. You are the scent of shawarma and underground flowers. You are the taste of garden fruit, and you are the feel of cobblestones under my feet and old brick under my fingers.
Above all, you are the lives you’ve brought together, even — or perhaps especially — in these days when the country around you is under such immense pressure. You’re the conversations you’ve fostered and the people you’ve sheltered. You are people I would never have met, and who I will now never forget, and my life would be poorer without them.
So this is a love letter to a city that, for six months, has invited me to call it home; a love letter to how you have endured, and what you may yet become; and a love letter for all the joys and challenges and discoveries you have brought me.
Thank you, for these lessons. And thank you for what I will learn, before our time together is done.
-Melissa
P.S. I made a video version of this missive, too.
I saved this newsletter for today, because it’s the anniversary.
It’s also very short, because to be totally honest with you, my mental health isn’t in the best place. I’m doing well overall, I just still need some time and healing space. But I did have a good and creative week in many ways, so I’m hanging in and getting back on my feet.
Happily, I now have some real Canadian comfort food in the pantry. Remember how, in a previous newsletter, I said that I really missed Kraft Dinner? Well, a magnificent American friend-of-a-friend arrived in Kyiv this week bearing a care package, which inspired me to make the most ridiculous video I’ve ever made. Enjoy:
Now, if I can just get someone to haul a jug of Clamato to Ukraine, I’ll be golden.
What I’m Reading
The Gilgo Beach Victims Were Always More Than Escorts. It’s nothing new, but it’s still important that the New York Times ran this piece identifying how media, police and the public dehumanize victims who engaged in sex work, and how that impacts their loved ones and, also, the trajectory of justice itself.
The Ukrainian Group Archiving Russian Soldiers’ Graffiti. I’ve seen some of this myself, in Borodyanka; in one case, occupying soldiers were so impressed by one middle-aged woman’s gumption, they spraypainted a note on her door to indicate she should be left alone. (They did later put a gun to her head and threaten to kill her, however.) This is a fascinating project; graffiti is so intentional and personal, there’s a lot to be gained by gathering it for deeper consideration.
When Death Is The Best Choice, Is It A Choice At All? When done carefully, with abundant safeguards, I’m a strong supporter of medical assistance in dying; I have spoken with families for whose loved one it was unquestionably the right choice, a kindness, a gift. But I’m deeply uncomfortable with the impending expansion of MAID eligibility in Canada, and this Nora Loreto piece very clearly articulates its dangers.
Under Ominous Skies. I’ve really enjoyed following Vincent Artman on Twitter for his deeply informed and righteously ethical perspectives on Ukraine. I’m quite excited to meet up with him in Kyiv next week, but in the meantime, this dispatch from Ukraine is wonderful (and also really inspires me to get back to what I want to be doing here).
One Photo, One Story
I don’t know exactly when Princess Olha’s face was returned to the sun. The last time I’d passed by St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, which was just two weeks ago, the trio of statues that guard its square were still hidden, as they have been since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion. Back then, citizens swaddled the monument in sandbags, and affixed it with tattered banner pleading “WORLD - HELP US.” In time, the monument was surrounded by the scorched hulks of Russian tanks, which still sit there on permanent exhibition. The sandbags grew filthy and burst at the seams.
But Tuesday night, as I walked past the square, Princess Olha and her holy flankers greeted me unveiled, in all their glory. The sight of their bright white bodies stopped me in my tracks: I’d only ever seen the monument shrouded in its armour. In fact, in that moment I realized that I didn’t even know what the statues under the sandbags looked like, or even who they represented. I’d never looked it up. That’s how fully I had learned and accepted the visual texture of Kyiv as it exists during war.
Lately, some soldiers coming back from the front have described Kyiv to me as feeling like a dreamland. They do not necessarily mean this in praise. One told me it reminds him of what happened after the initial shock of Russian actions in Donbas and Crimea had faded away: a sense that many people in the capital would like to just forget, move on, and pretend everything is normal. He’d noticed how, when he wore his uniform on the street in Kyiv lately, some people’s eyes seemed to hold more pity than pride.
I thought about that, as I considered the unveiled monument to Princess Olha. In one way, releasing the statues from their protective cocoon is another sign of resilience, of how Ukraine is still standing fearless and claiming its life; but it’s also one less visual reminder of the violence that is now primarily bombarding the south and the east.
Still, it’s lovely to meet her in person, finally.