The Square, Lit

From the upper terrace at night the Maidan arranges itself into lights: the stella with her guelder rose branch, the glass domes, the slow orbit of people who come here even in December, even at this hour. I stood at the railing a long time with my hands going numb.

No square in Europe carries more recent weight per cobblestone. Twice in my lifetime this space rewrote a country, and the second time I was fourteen, watching it from a kitchen in Bishkek with my mother switching channels between fear and hope.

Now I stand above it in the quiet and try to reconcile the television square with the real one. They do not quite align. That gap is why writers travel.