On the television, a Ukrainian man sits down

on the cold earth in front of a Russian tank

that’s poised to shoot, and as the tank inches

forward just a few inches at a time, the man

scoots back, inch by inch. Like the tiny piece

of a window lodged in the forehead of a child

who’s sucking from a hunk of stale bread and

who’s still trying to open the basement window

that’s just shattered, his little flower-shaped

mouth saying “Momma” in Ukrainian, the

child repeating himself unknowingly, while he

chews his iron bread and raises his ashen finger

inch by inch to his cheek in order to see what

that warm is, I’m staring from a point in space

like a heroin addict who’s just shot up in front

of the television a million miles away from a

sensation. Shamefully, it’s almost comforting

to imagine the Ukrainian boy asking himself

where the blood is from, and the man on the

ground in front of the tank, who’s miles away

from said boy, trying in staccato to stand after

being run over by that behemoth. Disgustingly,

it’s a relief to jump at imagining the skid from that

tank rattling the pictures on my walls and making

the imagined glass on my kitchen table slide

toward the final shatter it can never be, being

imagined. The ugly truth is that, while I feel very

deeply for the Ukrainian people, and share in some

of the suffering this war is perpetuating, I’m glad

I’m not there, and like a helpless, young child who’s

overwhelmed by violence to the point of developing

a dangerous kind of naivety, I find myself cluelessly

wishing in my own survivor’s guilt kind of way, that

we could all just sit down in front of one another and

be friends.