A sunny day in the city of Kiev.
Children playing, adults working, everyone going about their days.

Then the sky turned into a sheet of ash tossed upon a bed
and a rumble came through the ground.

A 3 year-old with her grandparents in the park.
“They’re coming,” she hears them say.
“Who!” she replies.
“The Russians.”

A young boy with his father working.
“They’re coming,” he says to the man next to him.
“The Russians,” his son says.

A new mother with her baby.
“They’re coming,” but she only hears a murmur.
“The Russians,” she whispers to herself.

They all step out to see it in the flesh.
~And in unison they said, as they looked at each other.
“They’re coming, the Russians.”

DISCLAIMER: this poem is to capture the essence of the shock at the war in Ukraine. It is not meant to offend anyone from Russia.