There’s a book club being put together by a friend who moved here in the last year.

She announced what the first book was going to be, so of course I ran and looked it up.

Twenty-four hours later and here it is: “By the Second Spring: seven lives and one year of the war in Ukraine,” by an American who had grown up there and has a PhD in history. You know I couldn’t pass that one up.

The first thing I did was to look for a list of chapters, hoping for names, but right after the title page there it was, a list of them. I knew there wouldn’t be someone I knew–but you just never know… (Thinking in particular of the gerdan artist who trusted me with photos of the shelling damage to her home inside and out and whose town has now been evacuated.)

I didn’t want to start reading yet. Not at this time of day. I didn’t want nightmares tonight; I wanted time after the first dose of the book to sift through my emotions and make peace with what I would encounter inside.

And yet.

I opened to a random page.

There were two mug shots and a poem.

Quoted in part:

Oh human, I cannot believe your life is

just about looking into my cell?

you stand in my heavy sorrow, my aching heart is filled with your misfortune

because you are just twice as sad as I am.

I have myself, and you are just a shadow

I am the good, you are the dust, decay

we are both prisoners…

I closed the book. Tomorrow I start.