My mother still keeps
the keys to our house destroyed by the enemy.
The keys rusted long ago
due to contact with oxygen and moisture.
But here, in this refugee settlement,
we lack oxygen,
while there is as much moisture in our eyes as you can imagine.
Those keys are no longer needed for any door.
Just like us, no one needs us either.
Those keys are happy when they look at us.
They have plenty of oxygen.
A genocide has been committed against the trees in our city.
There is also an oxygen problem for our future.
Perhaps those rusty keys will be needed in the future.
Where the trees have been cut down,
the municipality has put up a notice on the wall:
“Do not litter our city — fine: 100 manats.”
We have already
lost the keys to all the doors of life.
Taxes and fines have also broken us
from another side.
Still, thank goodness,
they do not charge us tax for oxygen.
I wonder if they would also charge us oxygen tax
for those keys?
