I want to run my fingers between the cold winds
And let them linger to inspect
every pores on my aging skin
The stories they carry are written
on dry leaves, dust and sand
Their whispers bounce and slide
on the goosebumps traveling up my hands
To my shoulders and deep in between every knot of my spine
For a quick instance, all is not lost, but found
Not only through the eyes, the keyholes of my soul
But all my senses through times of yesterday, today and tomorrow
Felt, touched and unmoved.

Where have the winds been to?
I smell perfume of the Atlantic,
of salt and seaweed on fresh waves crashing through
Mixed within it,
a sharp fragrance of burnt rubber and gunpowder
From a country whose cities I once wandered
Whose revolution I’ve only heard and read
through different channels and the internet
Whose people, I will always call brothers,
even though many I’ve never met.

Hello, Donetsk!
I heard some of your sons and daughters pulled down your flag
And raised their hearts for another country
It’s a little complicated for me,
an outsider looking in
For you see,
I was born a Nghe-Anese, living as an American,
so you must pardon my rude and naive observations
But I find it perplexing to see neighbors rise up to fight each other
Whether in support of:
“liberators”, “invaders” or maybe “instigators”
who want to see bloodshed.

It will be like a knife cutting into your own flesh
And starts a river flowing with red
On the rich earth that nourished you
The dirt, the trees with Slavic roots,
which bloomed into a Soviet flower
Wilted and renewed into a democracy and bloomed once more
More brilliant than before
with endless meadows of yellowest wheat under the bluest sky
This is the good earth that holds and have your ancestors’ lives
So it has been written into the dust and sand,
carved into the salt and coal mines
By the blood of the fallen and dreams of those remained.

Oh, Ukraine!
May your flag rides the wind and carry all your children’s hopes
Because right now, some want what can never be enough
And while some just want things to go back to the way it was
Many more have been drowning in flood of injustice,
waiting for a chance to come up for air
Sure, life is never fair,
but for as long as people live, freedom will be the ultimate rights
And the sons and daughters of Ukraine will be free by the morning light
To decide their own fates and to have control of their own destinies
Because what is a flag without a country?
What is a country without its people?
What is a people without their homes?
What is home, if it is not where we stand with our own heart?
Ukrainian heart is in Ukraine.

So let the winds travel with a message laced in the rain
A torrent is coming and with it Spring
A flower will bloom once more
and what divided will be whole again.