Was it Spring?

 She sent me a picture of a bud. A bud of a flower. It was spring. Life sprang from the cold, dry earth in her garden one cold morning in Kyiv.

Nature leapt to life. Oblivious to the bombs, missiles falling from the sky. Oblivious to the gunfire, the Molotov cocktails raining down. Oblivious to death.

I saw the picture. I showed him and he knew what I felt. Others wouldn't understand. It was nothing but a pixelated, low resolution picture of a flower pushing its way through the soil. Hoping to grow. Hoping to live. Not knowing it might probably burn.
For me, however, it transported me back to sunny afternoons spent gardening with her in Kyiv. I felt the dry air, smelt the freshly dug up soil, heard the swallows fly above.
Sowing seeds. Tomatoes, aubergines, nasturtiums, geraniums. The promise of life.

A year flew by. The air was dry again. The tulips flowered. The swallows came again. It was spring. But Kyiv burned under the swallows flight. I wonder if the swallows noticed the empty streets. I wonder if they noticed the difference in sounds. Cries of terror instead of delight. Death instead of life. I wonder, did they notice they flew alongside missiles?