We fled the city under fire and couldn’t take him… but he’s still waiting for us there.
That day the sky was torn to pieces, and the sound that seemed far away yesterday suddenly became closer than your own breath. People were running through the streets, stumbling, losing bags, grabbing children by the hands, and every step was a blow to your chest, because you didn’t know if you would reach the next corner alive. We took with us what we could grab in moments of despair: documents, a phone, some clothes, bread, a bottle of water. But my heart was torn out of my chest not because of the roar or fear — it was torn because he was left there, chained by the yard where the house used to be.
I remember his eyes. There was no panic in them, there was some kind of bottomless silence, like those who have already understood too much. We shouted at him: «Wait! «We will return!» but the words were drowned out by the noise of explosions, and at that moment it became clear that promises spoken on the run could become the heaviest debts in life. We rushed towards the bus, the crowd pushed, drove forward, and I turned around only once. He was sitting, pressed against the wall, as if trying to become a part of it, just so that those who smelled of death would not notice him.
Months have passed since then. Cities and shelters have changed, faces around have changed, even speech on the streets has changed, but one thing has never changed — his image. Every night he came to me, every morning I heard his quiet whine in my head, as if somewhere behind the wall there was a radio receiver turned on, and only one wave could break through all the frequencies — his expectation. People told stories about animals that waited for their owners for years, I nodded and kept silent, and I thought about how waiting under fire is not years, but an eternity that can end at any second.
“You have to forget,” one friend told me. “Everyone we couldn’t take is still there. Live on.” But how can you forget someone who greeted you with a joyful bark every spring, who sat by the gate while you were returning from work, who lay down next to you when it got cold? How can you forget a creature that knew neither betrayal nor lies, only devotion? I tried to explain, but people looked at me with pity and shook their heads, as if my grief was something too small against the backdrop of a great misfortune. They didn’t understand that for me he wasn’t “another dog,” but the last thread to a home that no longer exists.
Sometimes I talk to him out loud. In a whisper, so that the neighbors can’t hear. “Hang in there, do you hear? I will find you. I will come.» And in the silence of the room it seems that in response I can hear the light scratching of claws, as if he is standing behind the door and waiting for me to let him in. I close my eyes and see him still sitting there, in that yard where the snow has mixed with ash, and the walls are burnt and cracked. His neck grows into a rusty collar, and every minute stretches like a chain that does not allow him to take a step.
Once I showed his photo to a female volunteer. She was silent for a long time, then said: «He is waiting. Such people do not leave.» And there was more truth in these words than in any consolation. Because really — they do not know how to leave, they do not know how to betray. They only know how to wait. And this is what makes them stronger than us. We run, we make excuses, we say that «it happened that way», and they stay.
Recently, news came from a neighbor who stayed there. «He’s alive,» she wrote briefly. «Thin, but waiting.» I reread that message a hundred times, as if it were a prayer. Thin, but waiting. That means he still believes. Still hopes that one day those familiar footsteps will sound at the gate again.
And sometimes I’m afraid to think what will happen if I return one day and he doesn’t raise his head. If his eyes close before I keep my promise. The scariest thing isn’t the explosions or the bullets — the scariest thing is to return and see the empty corner where he sat, his muzzle pressed against the wall, and to understand that he waited too long.
But while he’s there, while his heart is beating, I have a duty. I don’t know how I’ll get through this, I don’t know how much time will pass, but I know one thing: in a city where houses are collapsing, among walls soaked with soot, there is one small living creature that still believes that we will come. And for the sake of this faith, it is worth going any distance.
Because sometimes the most terrible wars are not between people or for lands. The most terrible war is the war with yourself, with your powerlessness and excuses. And if I lose it, then I will lose not only him — I will lose myself.
He is waiting. And for the sake of this expectation, I must return. Even if for the whole world it will be only a step towards one dog, for me it will be a return home.
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