Something that should have been present stayed absent, and something absent kept making itself felt.

In the summer of 2025 I spent nearly a month in Odesa — it was my first trip when I was able to go outside of my hometown of Kyiv since the full-scale invasion started. After the annexation of Crimea, Odesa became one of the country's main vacation destinations. At the same time, through the full-scale war, it has remained a constant target: both for its port infrastructure and for the historical narratives Russia keeps trying to claim through it. The duality of a rear-front city, its forced "normality," looks at you from every street you walk, every corner. Walking through it felt like running a finger along a scar that hadn't closed.

To make sense of it, I later found language for it in Mark Fisher's "the eerie" — the feeling of presence where there is nothing. With each passing day in the city, that feeling grew even sharper.

R.M.