War is very similar to a dramatic poem. Drama might well be the most honest literary genre. A genre with nothing extra. No descriptions, no landscapes, not even an internal or external world. Only action. And every action, every second of it, changes everything.

Change is possible in a drama, but it happens vertically, not horizontally. Drama turns the world upside down; it flips the pyramid from its base onto its apex. It pulls up the base and tosses the mountain down. Inside a drama, you are both “from the peaks and lowlands” at the same time — you cannot be somewhere in the middle.

It is exactly what is happening to us now. Our reality is as narrow as a path winding between the cliffs. But the skies get turned upside down in it. It pulls up those standing at the bottom. It tosses down those standing on the top. It is a reality of an earthquake; a reality of an artillery strike.

In a garage in Kharkiv’s Saltivka, a wound of a neighborhood that suffered most from the hostilities, we saw a car lifted by the blast wave into the air for a few meters. It crashed down on the garage roof and has been there ever since.

When you watch the footage of a missile hitting Kremenchuk, you see pieces of metal and concrete raining down on people, small like bugs. Hail from the skies.

We all are living in this reality of the blast wave. We have been lifted into the air like helpless little kittens. And we do not know whether we will catch hold of the peaks or smash down on the ground.