Скільки

A count that doesn’t work well with a calculator: “skilki” sounds like a metronome of grief - one, two, one again - and in each beat someone’s street flickers, someone’s night without sleep, someone’s photograph in their pocket. This is not abstract arithmetic, but counting on fingers, where each number is a name, a house, a trench; the words stretch like curtains after an explosion, and they contain at the same time fatigue, stubbornness, and the desire to stop counting losses, but not to let oblivion win.

The irony here is not funny, but bitter and warm - like tea in a cold room: it’s funny and absurd to think about any promises when there is so much “skill” around, but this laugh is not from despair, but from resistance. The voice counts, the rhythm responds, and at the end of each line a small stronghold is hidden: no matter how much it takes, they will not kneel - and even in the count there is room for hope and for song.