Endling

by Maria Reva

She could spend hours watching them in their terrariums, hours while her own mind slowed, slowed, emptied. When she lifted her eyes, the world seemed separate from her, a movie in comical fast motion, something she could turn off.

She did not know how long she’d sat cradling the limp little body in her palm, paralyzed by an indescribable feeling, as if she was swelling and shrinking at the same time. A twinge of awe, to be the one to witness an evolutionary branch millions of years in refinement be snipped off; a twinge of power, to have played a hand in it just by having been born human. But mostly, she felt tiny and dumb and powerless.

I was writing about a so-called invasion of Western bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened. Even in peacetime I felt queasy leaning into not one but two Ukrainian tropes, ‘mail-order brides’ and topless protesters. To continue now seems unforgivable. So I wrote a different book, a different world, something I thought would be happier.

I need to keep fact and fiction straight, but they keep blurring together.

Romance: a winding, treacherous road, full of dead ends.

Art exists in the liminal space between the giver and receiver.