There lies peace in this morning, it is nesting on the streets, huddling together with relief in a solemn embrace.
Our beautiful city is a memory now, it exists in a thousands of digital and analogue photo albums, and in the minds of those who wandered these streets.
Some of them, or many rather, are not here to testify what once was, for they are dead. Minds who can’t speak of how bustling this city was during summer nor how quiet it was during winter.
They’ll never be able to say how many of the cherry trees actually blossomed in Kungsträdgården this summer, nor will any survivors, for the trees, just as the people, are gone. They were bombed before they had the chance to blossom into life.
In the quiet of the truce and in the wait for the end of this war, I think to myself – can one tell if the morning has broken if one wasn’t there to see the sun rupture the sky in half?
How can we know for sure that war on the opposite end of our globe is happening, if we have not heard the machine-guns shatter bodies into a million pieces? More importantly, who takes the time to care?
These are the types of thoughts I surround myself with. They are my best friends at night for they make everything seem mythical and diminutive, but during daytime they become my enemies. They give me hope in that that I want to believe, eagerly so, in humankind, and that we aren’t forgotten. This is why they are my enemies – hope in this situation is a curse.
Josie Mattsson 