The universe shuddered, and everything that had seemed important only yesterday vanished beyond the horizon, like the thought of something precious you long to remember, only to have the tension in the air erase every trivial and fleeting memory. That tension had been building for a long time, but only today did my familiar world split into a before and an after.
War.
It was a strange word that had never belonged in my world, in the fragile landscape of my soul, where rhymes intertwined with the whisper of the wind, where birds of hope painted vast circles across the sky with their wings, where morning dew quenched the thirsty earth, and the earth gave birth to every new dawn.
But this dawn was stillborn.
There was no life in it.
It seemed as though the entire universe had shattered into countless fragments, each tiny splinter piercing the wide-open eyes of the earth until she wept rivers of blood. Those rivers have flowed for five endless summers through villages and cities that have suffered beyond measure.
There is no medicine for such pain.
There is no refuge from evil.
There is no hope.
Prayer
I will never forget that day
When the war began.
My heart was shattered.
Life came to a standstill.
Between the past and the future—darkness.
Between the past and the future—tears.
Scorching pain.
Grief and fear.
Only a prayer remained
Upon my blood-bitten lips.
Even now it is impossible to believe.
No words can tell this story.
My God,
What have we done
That our children must suffer?
Help us believe again.
Take us beneath Your wing.
When will the sun finally rise?
When will goodness overcome evil?
Give us the strength to live again,
To conquer this infernal pain.
Only do not let us break.
Help us keep moving forward.
The war went on, while the rest of the world continued living its ordinary life. Some people wondered how they would earn their next penny, while others had grown weary of having everything money could buy.
I was trying to save those dearest to me, to pull them out of the hell that had arrived with the bloody horde.
Sometimes it seemed that it was I who was dragging my old car upon my shoulders. That aging car had become Noah’s Ark for my elderly parents, my sister, three cats, and Maya—the dog I had once rescued from a shelter, where she had barely clung to life among three thousand other innocent creatures. They had all entered this cruel world with nothing more than the desire to live, yet the world had abandoned them, casting them into an abyss so deep that the sun could never reach its bottom.
Those endless kilometers toward peace.
Those endless mountain roads toward freedom.
That endless journey toward the light.
It seemed as though I was living with my eyes tightly shut.
Pain surrounded me.
Darkness surrounded me.
I was fleeing the war, yet I could not flee myself.
I was afraid to open my eyes and see the ruined cities once again.
I was afraid to breathe deeply, knowing that the smell of smoke and gunpowder might fill my lungs once more.
Most of all…
I was afraid of the darkness.
Living in Darkness
How hard it is to live in darkness,
When you cannot see a way out,
When every breath becomes a struggle,
And your eyes can never grow accustomed to the night.
There is nowhere left to go.
Only a tiny ray of hope,
Barely flickering,
Whispering that perhaps
All of this is only a dream.
You hear distant voices,
Yet you cannot tell whose they are.
Are they strangers?
Or those you once called your own?
How hard it is to live in darkness,
Never dreaming anymore,
Hiding from the whole world,
Startling at every sound,
Never knowing—
Was it thunder,
Or another explosion?
How hard it is to lose yourself,
Not knowing whether you are still alive.
In darkness,
Even taking a single step is hard.
To begin.
To hope.
To long.
To love—without limits.
Without limits.
Without borders.
Without walls
Built by fear.
You cannot take a single step
Without someone to guide you.
Without a compass.
Without a destination.
Without purpose.
Without desire.
Without the taste for life.
Then you remain a prisoner,
For you have chosen
A destiny of your own—
A cold,
Black darkness.
But I refuse to live in darkness!
Darkness belongs to the weak,
And I am strong.
I want to love.
I want to laugh.
I want to draw strength
From kindness and warmth.
I WANT TO LIVE.
I AM STRONG.
I AM FREE.
I was almost sixty, and it was time for me to play the role of the Phoenix in the new play of my life.
I had to rewrite my story from the very beginning.
I had to learn how to walk without looking back.
I had to stop fearing thunder and lightning.
I had to create a new version of myself, step beyond my fears and insecurities, and finally learn how to live again.
My Universe Fell Apart
My universe fell into pieces,
The stars closed their eyes and fell asleep.
The planets wrapped themselves in blankets,
While comets vanished beyond the horizon.
I feel the breath of an evil wind.
It scatters all my thoughts,
And I long to scream,
Yet my cold, weathered lips
Cannot part.
I want to cry:
Give me back my boundless sky!
I want to call to the stars:
Open your eyes!
The world has plunged into an endless darkness,
And no light can break through the night.
No sun can warm you in the heart of winter.
No stars can bloom in the deepest darkness.
When winter settles in your heart,
It is so hard
Not to drown in your own sorrow.
I have never loved the decay of autumn.
I have never loved the treachery of winter.
They leave me wandering through a dark den, longing only for the beauty of spring.
I dream of fragile snowdrops.
I dream of a bee drinking the fragrance of a spring morning.
When sweetness ripens in the air, I begin gathering the scattered pieces of my universe.
A new universe.
One I have never known before.
A universe woven with love and stitched together with happiness.
It still lives inside unopened buds, but soon it will burst into blossom.
It is impossible not to love such a universe.
My new universe.
My new life.
Why are we always afraid of the new?
Why is the very first step the hardest?
Especially when we carry a lifetime of memories upon our shoulders. To create something new, we must first allow something old to fall away.
Sometimes we must tear down the foundations we once believed would last forever.
Sometimes we must dismantle the life we knew.
Sometimes we must let go of the person we used to be.
Because no one can board the train to the future while remaining tied to the memories of the past.
And so…
I begin building my new city.
The City Has Washed Its Face with Rain
The city has washed its face with rain.
Pearls of light shimmer in the puddles.
Bare and frozen trees
Have surrendered themselves to the wind.
Why does autumn no longer call to me
With its crimson beauty?
Why, in this autumn city,
Am I so afraid of my dreams?
I fear returning once again
To the dark abyss of yesterday.
That fear has become part of me,
Forever pulling me back toward the night.
The sky is adorned with brilliant stars,
The city glows with countless lights.
And once again I gather my strength
To rewrite the story of my life.
I long to change the scenery,
To choose an entirely new cast,
So that this new performance
May finally be lived in a different way.
Will I still be myself?
I wrote this role with tears.
Pain has always been my inspiration,
And the wounds within my heart
Have never truly healed.
Clouds settle over the city.
The city falls asleep.
And through the night
I will keep writing
The story of my new life.
It will be filled with inspiration,
With the breath of fresh wind.
I will learn how to live.
I will wipe away my tears.
I long to feel what freedom is.
To lose myself in boundless happiness.
I long to become myself.
And I know…
I will.
My poems walk beside me through life.
They are birds that carry me above the clouds, allowing me to breathe in the light when twilight has already fallen below.
My poems are guardian angels, protecting my soul.
Writing is my meditation. I take each word as though it were a pearl and carefully thread it onto the string of my memories.
Words are my tears, shed countless times upon the page.
Words are tiny glass beads from which I have built the castle of my dreams.
Whenever I translate my poems into another language, I feel as though I am speaking with my closest neighbours and friends. And every one of us is enriched by that conversation.
Through my poems, I live a thousand lives. They save me from despair. I play countless roles, yet I remain myself. And more than anything, I want to make this world kinder and more humane.
As I Give Birth to Poems
As I give birth to poems, I see myself
Sometimes as Shakespeare, sometimes as Homer.
My life is like a strange series,
Conceived by a masterful director.
It seems that everything has smashed to pieces,
Yet once again I haul my stone uphill.
At times I am the Phoenix, at times Achilles,
I’m always searching for support and strength.
I believe in dreams, in spring, and happiness,
Yet I fear betrayal and the storm.
With the first light of early dawn,
I catch the taste of crystal dew.
But words are not the only language through which I create.
Sometimes my poems leave the page and are reborn in fabric, where colours speak in place of words.
Hand-stitched fabric collage · 2026
In My Dreams, I Paint My Pictures
In my dreams, I paint my pictures,
Trying to remember every one.
Yet I fear that when morning comes,
They will fade before they can be shared.
My pale-blue hope,
The starlit song of a nightingale,
The sunlit power of inspiration,
And life’s crimson sails.
Violet sorrow and helplessness,
Dark-grey veils of gloomy mist,
Lilac springs of melody,
And the rosy lie of promises.
The pearly youth of the wind,
And spring, still tender in its green.
The whole palette—from pain to happiness—
I will carry to you within my heart.
Pieces of the puzzle of my life are constantly disappearing. I miss some of them deeply, because they hold precious memories. But there are others I hope never to find again—pieces I would rather forget forever.
So how can I complete the puzzle?
I believe there is still time for me to create new pieces, replacing those filled with tears, anxiety, and pain. I will replace them with spring rain, with the laughter of my little granddaughter, and with all the poems I hope to leave behind as my legacy.
May this puzzle be filled with colour, with the blue of the sky, the brilliance of the sun, and the light of love.
This is the new universe I am creating—the one I will leave behind.