Kyiv Sleeps in Hallways and Wakes in Ashes

In Kyiv, we don’t sleep in beds, we sleep between walls, praying they’re thick enough to hold back death until morning.

It begins with a siren. Not the kind from myth, but the modern wail of circuitry, a mechanical shriek that carves itself into your chest at midnight.

It comes without mercy, without preamble, and without end. This is Kyiv. A city that doesn't fall asleep so much as lie in wait, ears pressed to the silence, counting seconds between explosions. Here, war is not just fought; it is endured. It seeps through plaster and parquet, curls around teacups and towel racks. When I returned in June, my fifth time since the full-scale invasion, I did not arrive to report, I arrived to remember. To remember how a city breathes when the air itself is trying to kill you.

Danya 25, an animator with the National Museum of Ukraine, sits quietly at his kitchen table in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, preparing a modest meal of greens and tea under the soft light of a Soviet-era flat. The table, draped in a floral cloth, holds microgreens, cups, and calm, a portrait of domesticity turned defiance in…