Zoya has arrived in my London street, from Kyiv via Prague. She is too old to contemplate a new life and learn a new language. She is safe, but longs to go home.
Zoya sits, now all alone, just staring through a window pain to where a pink magnolia blooms in someone else's garden. And all her dacha's winter buds are crushed and tombed in oil and mud where tank and track has churned and soldiers on their backs are burned and seep her garden soil in blood. Net curtains dim the window pane but she can count each passing train seen through the boundary hedge, and glimpse each combed and coiffured head at eight, and half-past nine, and ten, as Zoya sits upon a bed and sees them coming home again at five from Waterloo. Her curtains flap with icy blasts damp cushions lie with shards of glass and where her gentle cats once basked, dog packs now run her Kyiv street. Although the hosts are warm, and kind, Sweet Zoya is now seventy-nine. Her smile conceals her inner tears, her loss of ending peaceful years sat gazing through her bedroom window, towards her glowing sunflower fields, her husband still asleep beside her.
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Zoya has arrived in my London street, from Kyiv via Prague. She is too old to contemplate a new life and learn a new language. She is safe, but longs to go home.