I Knew That Street Before It Was Rubble

What Russia hit was more than a place. It was a piece of my life

YOU THINK YOU’RE JUST READING THE NEWS. Then you see a word that used to be your life.

Yesterday, Russia bombed Sumy.

And I know that name might not mean much to most people reading this. But to me, it’s personal. It’s part of my life.

Sumy isn’t just a city about five hours east of our capital Kyiv.

It’s where I lived for a couple of months, some time before I was married or had any idea about what I was doing with my life.

I was broke. In a deep depression. Tired. And Sumy, without knowing it, helped me back on my feet.

Its people, its rhythm, its silence. The way that city made space for someone like me.

My wife’s family is from there. I walked its streets in the cold. I waited for buses at dawn. I bought bread from corner shops with counted coins. I lived.

I know Sumy the way you know a city that helped you get back on your feet when you didn’t think you could.

And now I watch those streets disappear.

Can you imagine what it’s like to see a place that once held you, now shattered? To recognize a balcony, a sidewalk, a wall, all broken by a missile that never asked who lived there?

This isn’t abstract. This is a bomb falling on your memory.

Because when a missile lands in a city you once lived in, you don’t just watch the news. You feel it in your soul.

You remember how life sounded there. The laughter of children playing in the park, the metal clank of market stalls opening in the morning. You remember the cafes. The pharmacies. The places that had nothing to do with geopolitics and everything to do with being alive.

Russia is not just destroying buildings. It’s destroying the places that held people together. Theaters where someone once dreamed. Schools that carried futures. Libraries full of quiet afternoons.

These buildings weren’t symbols. They were shelters. Shelters for memories. For dreams. For entire lives that now only exist in rubble.

And Sumy, the quiet and resilient Sumy, didn’t deserve this. No city does. No one.

I never want someone to feel what I’m feeling when I recognize a collapsed building because it used to be where you bought bread.

No one should have to watch the news and recognize what’s left of the place they once called home.

You probably never heard about Sumy before the news or this article.

But I’m sure there’s a place like Sumy inside you. A place tied to memory, to love, to something that made you whole again.

And maybe that’s why I keep writing. We tend to keep thinking we’re safe because we’re watching from a screen. But what if you weren’t watching? What if you were inside the frame?

What would you wish someone else had done?

Because even if you’ve never been to Sumy, I want you to care about it. I want you to understand that this isn’t just about one city, one strike, one morning’s death toll.

It’s about what we lose when we stop seeing other people’s cities as real.

I owe Sumy too much to let it become a footnote.

I still remember the woman who used to sell me fruits at the corner stall. She used to look at me so serious, almost like she didn’t like me for some reason. But after a few weeks, she saved me the best ones. And she never gave me a single smile. For some reason I never forgot that.

And I don’t want her street to disappear without someone saying it mattered.

So let this be my small act of remembrance.

For Sumy.

For everyone who loved it before the headlines.

For the version of me who found some light there, when everything felt dark.

And for whatever pieces of it can still be saved.

If nothing else, let this be proof that the ones we love, the places we carry, don’t vanish quietly.

The world doesn’t need more spectators.

It needs people who remember.

🇺🇦

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