Night shifts and first editions

When I work night shifts, I get the first print edition of The New York Times international edition. Lately, I don't know exactly how I feel when the front page doesn't feature coverage of Ukraine, of the tanks and artillery, of dead bodies and destroyed houses in my country, of my people.

They say you get used to everything. This is the worst thing in journalism: not the habits of the journalist, but the habit of the topic. We know the reader gets tired if nothing new happens for a long time. No, the daily killing and destruction in my country is no longer new.

It's a truth that, every day, makes me sick to think about. Even I sometimes wish I could take a day off from reading the news. But I read it anyway.

Every day it hurts my cheekbones to smile at people with plump wallets from stable democracies. Every day to read the news about the bombings. Every day to count down a new day of the war, knowing that the reader is growing tired of this “story,” that there is no end in sight, that we are in this habit of just listing, fixing, but not in a position to analyze, much less predict.

What guests will say

When they find out that I am Ukrainian, the hotel guests react in different ways. Some want to reach out and take hold of my hand, most sigh and make those dog eyes, other cringe, and my "favorite" tell me directly to my face that this is just another Afghanistan, where America and Russia play out their political games.

I sometimes wish I could take a day off from reading the news. But I read it anyway.

Even I sometimes wish I could take a day off from reading the news. But I read it anyway.

The bridges and castles lit up in yellow and blue, the heat, the ash from the sky from the forest fires, the crowds of tourists, the millions of ice cubes in thousands of cocktails at hundreds of tables. The sun of southern France has never burned so brightly.

And right here, right here in my fatigue and displacement, in my everyday dreams, they are flying, flying nonstop these blind fucking rockets. Flying and falling on children, on flowers, on roads, scraping scars on my heart and my body.

A warm body

Why don't they march as infantry, fight our boys, look the enemy in the eye. Sons of bitches. But no. Flying and flying, God, every day these rockets fly.

They crash into the festival, into the hot beach, into the bright swimsuit, the sweating summer glass, tearing through the crowds of innocence, scattering posters over the streets that just a second ago were so alive.

If I could just shut up all these mouths from where the news of death keeps coming. If I could just stop them from screaming and spitting in my face, stinging my body. A huge body, warm. The tender body of my Ukraine.

And life goes on. You get used to everything, even the most extreme contrasts. Simultaneously here and there. Cutting in with screams and blood, bursting with laughter and music.

Sun and death.