—BUT EVERY SINGLE TIME THAT I DO, I’M LIKE, UM

  

                                           Donbas

 

 I’m drinking a dead Russian tonight, the liquid briny and entirely regretful.

Again, you tell me I am being over-sentimental, with those eyes, and those perfectly plucked brows that hook into two concentric half-moons.

I turned off the news ten thousand years ago, but it’s still playing on repeat, that sallow scene with the sobbing mother in her village, clutching broken pieces, her boy nothing but limbs and ropes of blood, human spaghetti or Bolognese, her screams muted yet pinging, pinging, and pinging in the gray distance as you nod off again, just beginning to snore.