Russia – Ukraine War
A heavy silence settled around the dinner table.
The young man entered his home, and found his parents sitting around their small, scratched up wooden table. A small light illuminated the modestly furnished apartment; steaming hot soup awaited him at one of the four wooden seats they had.
Yet suddenly, no one wanted to eat. In the middle of the table, a dreaded letter from the government was on display: the draft. The young man was only twenty, and therefore of draftable age.
They told stories and laughed and made jokes throughout dinner, trying to make it a memorable one. Yet the sun slipped below the horizon far faster than it usually seemed to, as happens when we are dreading something. When the last gold sliver fell below, their world seemed to envelope in darkness and the fireplace seemed to flicker.
They stood at the entranceway, mother and father, arms wrapped around each other: holding it together for the sake of their son, yet planning on breaking in pain once he leaves. They smile and wave and wish him luck, telling their dear beloved son that they are proud that he is going to fight. They watch him fade into the painted sunset, green bag slung over his shoulder. They watch his broad figure become smaller and smaller, increasingly failing to hold in their tears. They had to hold the pain of not knowing whether they would see their own child again; they had to bear the thought that their beloved son might die in battle.
Barely a man, barely had begun life.
He had a future; he had college; he had a girlfriend: they planned to start a family some day…
They knew it might have been his last dinner with his parents.
They knew that would probably be their last dinner as a family.
He reached the battlefield.
He stood, wildly waving, wildly waving a heavy gun: weilding a gun with the hands he had hugged his momma with the day before. Barely knowing how to shoot, he fires at life he yesterday would have hugged, would have loved, would have befriended. He fires bullets wildly; he fires blindly; metal deadly pieces pierce the air, headed for the hearts of the young boys just like him. Into the night metal deadly pieces fly; they fly, they fly, they fly…
He does things he never would have imagined he would have done; he blindly fires, fires with tears in eyes and a heart ripping in half; fires at boys just like him, young boys ripped from life to come to fight: each firing from a gun they were handed, aiming death at the very ones that could have been their friends.
Nomi Shira 
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