belabour
She wakes, on Sunday morning, to a world that she did not go to sleep in.
There are people in her hallway playing Russian roulette with parchment-paper, and Belarus decides to become a ghost as she passes them. They're deciding her fate, she deduces, from the way they examine her furniture and work out which items can be sold and which can be hailed as national monuments. She is going to need to attract tourists now, those perversely fascinated and those in mourning.
While she was lost in slumber, someone came in and changed her bed sheets. They took the mattress.
Her hands shake and her pretty shoes scuff against smooth tiles; her steps don't hit the floor at the correct angle, and if she keeps walking like this she's going to twist her ankles until they crack. All of this, she knows, is the fault of the West, and their witch hunt – children stolen one by one, and now she is the seventh son. They are the reason her brother can no longer afford her, they are the reason her citizens no longer trust the Union.
She walks like she's intoxicated, she smiles like she's happy.
Her entire house is filled with strange men, her government ministers and landmass administrators, congratulating each other in self-satisfied ways. Maybe they fuck each other for a job well done in her bathroom, maybe they're the ones that took her mattress.
A week in politics is worth a decade, seventy years is worth a signature. Those strange men have signed away her certainty and given her room to breathe, away from the man she loves, the man she swore allegiance to in 1921 – when he ripped her apart and gave a part of her to Poland.
Someone really needs to wash the windows, Belarus thinks, because they are very embarrassing windows for a grand, independent nation like her to possess. The sands of time coats the panes, making them impossible to see through, letting very little light shine in to her house. It's a nice house. She wants to be able to see it properly.
(She's slept for long and she's awoken, she's learnt what must be done –)
Everything was safe before. She didn't have to take responsibility, but now she can hear them invading every corner of her mind – she hears the thoughts of her citizens, their patriotic songs and their countless prayers. Belarus can't understand; why are they placing their hopes in her hands? People have told her what she is, she knows full well; she breaks and burns, hurts and harms.
(–her people need land and freedom, that better life must be won—)
It's time.
She pushes past tittering women on her staircase to get upstairs again, past idle conversation and drinks on silver trays that she will have to auction off very soon. They are hosting a party in her honour, a toast to their new autonomy, their glorious independence. Her home is filled with officials and military members this morning, it seems, as they count down the hours before they can call themselves Belarusian without having to add Soviet.
How is her brother doing? Has he noticed she's gone with the others? One after one after another, droplets of water going back to the continental shelf. He must be furious, a child that wakes to broken toys on a snow-bleak Christmas morning, a mother bird greeted with nothing but an empty nest.
Parental is perhaps not the best way to describe him, but she has seen him gentle, tame, and weak.
It was a long time ago.
When she reaches the top of her stairs, she takes a good look around the first floor, before deciding it's safe to proceed. The straps of her shoes, black with little bows, snap as she takes her steps, stumbling across the corridor towards glass doors at the end of it. She moves past empty bedrooms and staring children, popping their balloons with her glare so their little eyes start to cry, cry, cry.
Belarus flings out her arms and opens the glass doors, stepping out onto the balcony that lies beyond. She can see for miles from here, from the structures of Minsk to the waters of Vitebsk. These are now all her lands, and hers alone, once more. Surely this is cause for celebration; the people currently making themselves at home in her manor are correct to be delighted with their liberty.
Her eyes close, and the breeze today is easily enjoyed, reassuringly cool against her burning cheeks. She listens closer to her people, their voices in her head; there are choirs now, and in the background she hears a scream.
She raises a hand, brushes a slithering strand of hair back behind her ear, and smiles for the world she woke up to.
notes
In 1921, Belarus was split between Polish and Soviet rule; in 1944, Belarus was reunited and became fully Soviet. Belarus gained official independence from the collapsing Soviet Union on Sunday, 25 August, 1991. It was the seventh country to declare independence. The parts in brackets are altered quotes of a song called 'Belarusian Marseillaise', a patriotic revolutionary anthem from 1906.