Bucha 2022

Dark smudges in the sky,
or is it black feathers?
You see them now.
Black birds. Ravens and vultures
circling over Kyiv.
In the city outskirts,
red soldiers are invading.
You hear them marching,
and the hammering sound is getting louder.
You hear frightening gunfire.
You wonder who was killed.
A family member?
Your mother? Your husband? Your daughter?
Then you hear pounding thunder,
bombing in the distance. Vivid flowers blooming in bursts of stars.
The persistent marching is getting even closer.
With hundreds more, you run
as your heart thumps in your chest
and ears. The soldiers catch you
and the others.
The soldiers circle around
the group in a place
that will later be known
as the Ukrainian Killing Fields.
Closer, louder gunfire.
And one bullet rockets
into a man’s head.
He falls, and the red soldier
moves on to the next innocent victim.
Then the next.
And on and on and on.
Porcelain cups
dropping onto a hard floor and
shatter with a painful crack.
Thousands of shattering cups.
You watch the horror
as people around you collapse and perish.
More and more cups fall.
A soldier finally approaches you. He ties your hands
behind your back
and aims the gun
a foot away from your head.
He pulls the trigger.
Another cup shattered.

Allison Carroll got her poem “Light” about her visual disability published. Carroll’s other publication is her creative nonfiction story called Death by Pen. Her piece focuses on the night Carroll was abused.