The Alley of Lost Villages

Near the checkpoint there is an alley of signs, one for each village the accident erased: names in white on dark boards, planted in two rows like an orchard of absences. In the snow it reads as exactly what it is, a cemetery for places.

I walked it to the end, which takes longer than you expect because there are so many, and because at some point you start reading every name aloud in your head, and that has its own pace. Kopachi. Zalissya. Names that now belong to signage.

My tracks were the only ones that morning. At the end I turned and looked back down the row and understood the alley's quiet arithmetic: a country is a list of villages, until it is a list of signs.