Kateryna Biruk's text out of the Perspective of the Kovelchanka building

Dear Kovelchanka,

I am writing to you without any hope to be heard or treated. I've lost everything and been struggling with agony of loneliness, as well as anxiety, and have no chance to clutch onto life, because I feel trapped in a cage of endless exchanges of fire and deaths.

Everything started suddenly so that nobody could even imagine what hell we're going to come. The War knocked on the door and everything turned upside down. And then — military uniform and rifle, but I tried not to bury myself in deep thoughts of self-destruction, finding amidst the chaos illusive pieces of calmness.

It wasn't an arcade or just a pseudo shooter game, played by every child with wooden sticks in the backyard of school. There was no opportunity to enter the fight again if you've lost or restart the episode, as every mistake can become a fatality. Every action and inhale counts, you don't have a right to slip up.

There was the only rule: «if you can't become a killer, then the killed one is you». Unfair, isn't it? That's why we had to commit loads of crimes because of desperation. Although I have no excuse, there wasn't any choice to provide my family with security. Ironically, even after that they haven't survived.

Instead of coming home I witnessed many teary eyes among people around, because everyone was sobbing — from soldiers to mothers who were begging not to kill their children. Some of them did that inside their soul, while others collapsed their throats. And, honestly, I don't realise what is more complicated, however my heart falls apart too.

Oh dear, I really killed people. A lot of people: adults, teenagers, seniors, little children. They can't stand any chance for bright and ambitious future anymore and are eaten by disgusting worms in the cold ground.

Every time I close my eyes, I see a body of the boy who was killed by my arms, and I realise the disability of sleeping. He reminds me of my son: the same cinnamon eyes, freckles and wheaten hair.

Like wife's ones. If only I could see them again. Just for one second to make sure that they are alive.

I'm scared, broken, have no strength to deal with this alone and it drives me crazy.

If earlier I had at least reason why I continued fighting, right know I turned out to be like in coma, full of regret and fear. I miss my love till the latest cells of my beaten body. She was the only one motivation for my existence, but her bones are kept under the graveyard, like millions of others. I've lost the last purpose to live and I haven’t any chance for healing. The only thing that remained — autumn wind and fallen leaves, they will always remind me of her.

I know that the next week won't come to me. It's the last September, I've experienced. The doctors and nurses don't even try to save me, but I'm not asking for it. I am not really worth being saved. And I still continue to be scared of what will happen next when life will leave my lungs. Will it be more frightening than the horror I am witnessing now? Maybe. I can't imagine what is more terrifying than the war.

There won't be any victory, because we all are losers. Everybody lost a piece of himself and won't live a normal life without nightmares about vicious circle of everyday deaths.

We all are doomed and it's unbearable. We are a damaged generation who was born at the wrong time.

Well, this is the end of my letter about my thoughts and of myself at all. There won't be any useful information for the future society, who will find these lines by chance, as well as any names or detailed events of that period. It was just a confession of an ordinary German soldier, who felt so hopeless lying in a hospital bed that wrote a letter to the inanimate building, because he didn't have anybody left.

Hope you will fix the world until you find this,

Anonymous.