An hour after dusk, when the lighting ban begins, she creeps out to her kitchen garden. It is a black-black night—like that bleakest, darkest night, when a knock brought news to her door.
In daylight hours her kitchen garden is a haven, a place she can focus on the soothing drone of bees or deciphering raucous sparrow chatter. A place she can plunge her calloused hands into the sable soil of her Motherland and breathe in deep the pungent scent. From her kitchen garden Olia can absorb earthy mettle as she shelters between rows of cabbages, corn and beets, while a sunflower-yellow sun radiates hope in a clear flag-blue sky. And from her kitchen garden, she can drift back to happier times when her family was together, not yet forced to far-away scatter or enlist in mandatory battle.
On these black-black nights, when she is smothered in pitch-black grief, she comes to her kitchen garden seeking consolation, craving remedy. Needing light.
She sinks to her knees. Dirt clots press through the fabric of her worn house dress, bury into her thick woollen tights. She looks up.
Usually, at least one star winks down. Tonight, not even moon-sliver. How odd it only takes a puff of cloud to snuff out star-light—even super-bright supernovas bursting with eons of star-life. It isn’t right. She could curse these malevolent nebulae and their malignant power. She could simply weep. Instead, she does what too many mothers in too many lands do: she clasps her hands together, but she does not bow her head.
Fortified by soil grit, she lifts her face higher to the sky. Wishes on a star she can’t see but knows must exist somewhere, for her remaining son to survive until those oppressive clouds pass over.
Originally from Missouri, Sherry Morris (@Uksherka & @uksherka.bsky.social) writes prize-winning fiction from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She also presents a monthly online spoken-word radio show featuring short stories and flash fiction on Highland Hospital Radio (hhr.scot). Many of her stories stem from her Peace Corps experience in 1990s Ukraine. Read more of her work at uksherka.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment