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All I want to do is lie down I ary and so tired and so sad I do not even care if I die

“Yes,” I say I don’t care I just want to stop

But Sasha is there, urging et home, and our children climb into bed with us, I thank God my husband is there

“Don’t you give up,” he whispers to et you out of here ”

I promise

I agree not to give up, though I don’t knohat it even means then

And in the , he kisses my cheek, whispers that he loves me, and he leaves

In late December, the city slowly freezes to death It is dark almost all the time Birds drop from the sky like stones The crows die first; I rerees below zero becomes normal The streetcars stop in their tracks like children’s toys that have fallen out of favor The water mains burst

The sleds are everywhere now Wos hos, buckets of water fro they can burn or eat

You’d be ae sold in the o to the markets anymore What is the point? I see beautiful fur coats and jewels selling for nothing and oil cakesfor exorbitant prices

We do as little as we can, my children and I Our apartment is black all the tiht and very few candles are left to light the darkness Our little burzhuika is everything now Heat and light Life We have burned most of the furniture in our apartment, but some pieces are still left

The three of us are wrapped tightly together all night, and in theaken slowly We lie beneath all the blankets we have, with our bed pushed close to the stove, and still aken with frozen hair and frost on our cheeks Leo has developed a cough that worries et him to drink hot water, but he resists me I cannot blame him Even after it is boiled, the water tastes like the corpses that lie on the river’s frozen surface

I get up in the cold and take however long Ior shatter a drawer, and feed the wood into the stove There is a ringing inat the merest step I know my own body by its bones now Still, I smile when I kiss my babies awake

Anya groans at my touch and this is better than Leo, who just lies there

I shake him hard, yell his na toinof my heart