I remember driving along the Rybnytsya River, from Kosiv to Yavoriv, hoping to see a kingfisher. Not the belted kingfishers we have near us, but Alcedo atthis, the common or river kingfisher, green-blue, with rufous underparts. Instead, there were washed fleeces, white, ruddy, creamy yellow, grey-black, hanging on the bridge leading to a small farm, a woman weaving lizhnyks from yarn rich with lanolin, a wooden church, villages high in the mountains with smoke rising from chimneys and the scent of apples coming in the open windows. Earlier that day I’d found a quiet place near the river to pee, thinking myself alone in the kalyna bushes, and then noticed young boys down in the water, splashing and laughing in the sun-spangled air. I always thought I’d return. I never dreamed missiles would skim the air, that atrocities would be committed in places I’d visited, that rivers would flood fields and houses. 26 year old Margo speaks to the dead.
...Theresa Kishkan 