Eleven Hours

Within the past week, Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was struck by extensive missile attacks from Russia. The bombardment lasted nearly eleven hours. Eleven grueling, harrowing hours. From morning until night, the entire day was consumed by unrelenting assaults. For Ukrainian citizens, each moment was filled with uncertainty and dread. That deep breath we take at the end of the day may never come for them. These citizens are enduring something most of us can’t begin to fathom. A day we might dismiss as stressful or forgettable has, for them, become a footprint in cement. It leaves a permanent mark, like spilled ink across the pages of their lives. And that ink doesn’t just stain the present; it seeps into the past and bleeds into the future. You can’t erase it. You can only hope to contain it.

Among the victims were six injured children. Children who haven’t even lived long enough to understand the world around them. Children who represent the beginning of a story, the pages that shape who we become. When the first chapters of a book are stained with violence and fear, it becomes hard to believe the rest of the story could ever look different. When the only book you’ve ever read begins with blood and rubble, it’s easy to assume that’s all the world has to offer. In this image, we see a child, displaced from her home, tears tracing paths down her face. Unimaginable pain, with an unimaginable burden placed upon someone who hasn’t even been given the freedom to make her own choices. A child who will one day become a woman. Yet for her, childhood won’t be a place of nostalgia, but a scar, blackened by pain and fear. A constant reminder that life can collapse without warning. She wears a pink hat, maybe once her favorite color. A hat she may never be able to look at the same way again. And yet, for many people outside Ukraine, the war feels distant. We get caught up in our own work, our own deadlines, our own ambitions. We pour ourselves into someone else’s business, someone else’s goals, and convince ourselves that we’re doing enough. But in the background, innocent lives are being rewritten by terror, and we still have the power to help.

So when you wake up tomorrow, count your eleven hours. Bask in them. Then ask yourself what you’re doing to improve the eleven hours of those who know only the sound of whistling missiles and crumbling buildings. Ask yourself: when you were a child, who would you have needed to save you? Then become that person. You don’t have to feel strong. You don’t have to feel capable. You must act. Because if you don’t, who will? Because if we don’t, then one day, when the ink begins to spill across our own pages, the world may turn away from us too.

-Noah Centrone, War Correspondent