The Girl from Chernobyl
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/06/chernobyl-disaster-photos-1986/590878/
It was a September day in 2010
I was trying to rebuild my life when
a conference brought me to Minsk
This was my first time in the Belarussian capital
two months before elections, Lukashenko was doing his all
to be voted President for the fourth time since 1994
I took a few days free
in this country hitherto unknown to me
to visit and explore
I sought out the part of town
where I had read Oswald used to hang around
I met an old man who upon my request
Showed me where Harvey and his Russian wife
used to spend their life
the entrance to their building
The old codger upon my insistence
claimed Oswald’s innocence
a fabrication invented by the CIA
But what I really want to tell you
is about a girl I ran in to
at the monument to Chernobyl
I sat down at the place
a rotunda without a face
a structure without personality
When appeared a young lady
who took a seat across from me
for a while we remained in silence
Then the girl began to cry
putting a handkerchief to her eye
I was at a loss
I summoned up my courage
and tried to encourage
her to tell me what had brought her to tears
From Chernobyl she was, and as a good daughter
visiting Minsk, she had come to pay respects to her father
who had perished in the conflagration of 1986
Her dad had been one of the firefighting men
who were sent into reactor four when
the pyre was about to spin out of control
The girl was twenty-four
I didn’t find out much more
except that she never knew her father
When her dad risked his all
not knowing whether he would fall
her mother was pregnant with her
I told her how my mother
through the Spanish flu had lost her father
nineteen days before her birth
We parted in all innocence
I want to sense
that the sharing of our stories
helped her heal her wound
however, it felt challenging and profound
- at least a little bit
Click to read in Spanish
