Come back home where the iron birds will never find you. Come back home where no one will find you. Look through your fingers of glass: the widow’s windows open up to a cemetery. And I’m leaving. I’m leaving like an autumn flower on a journey to return to you one day, Mom. An impossible task awaits me: to find a green tree in the ice sculptures of frozen times and ruined cities. There will certainly be a bird hiding in this tree. The biggest difficulty is to distinguish between an ordinary bird and a crow king. The biggest difficulty is to try once again not to scrape my knees, not to choke to death on the silence, not to drink the plague water, not to breathe in the bloody air. I don’t know how and where to go, but I will definitely get there: and the crow king will show mercy and resurrect my brothers. My brothers, your sons, Mom. Remember how, as a child, you called us sparrows when we flew into the kitchen after school and stole cakes from the table? You don’t remember anything, you’re turning into stone. And I hope that I’ll have time to return home by the time a scream is born in your throat, and after that there’s only a bigger, denser silence. I hope that the Raven King will help me fix this misfortune. I’m not sure of the end, I’m tormented by cobras of doubt: what if the Raven King doesn’t exist? A feeling of fear mixed with humility: like in childhood, when I was afraid to sled down a high snowy hill, but you pushed me forward, Mom. I’ve grown up: no one pushes me. This forest is like a maze devoid of Virgil. It seems to me that here and now I’m forgetting how to walk. My feet are locked in the ground. I put down roots and turn into a tree. The Raven King is as far away as love or a peaceful life. And a rider rushes past me in a cart of wood and confusion. He asks about a son. The Raven King does not show his presence, but the whole forest is filled with his laughter. The cart and the rider himself turn into a cave that no one will ever enter. The forest grows. I grow. It seems to me that there is no more time. The Raven King will never show himself, this is a predetermined fact. But who am I? I am just a tree tired of beetles, birds and time. I no longer remember where my home is. Another couple of decades and I will die. Return home where the iron birds will never find you. Return home where no one will find you. Look through your fingers of glass: from widow’s windows opens a view of the cemetery. And I leave.
— Mykyta Ryzhykh has been published in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals Litсenter, Ice Floe Press, and Soloneba, and in the Ukrainian literary newspaper.