WAKE UP

One day, my world fell. It collapsed — to knock me off my Path. I lost my way. I put on a stranger's mask of lies. I learned to lie so well that I believed it myself.

But the mask never sleeps. Inside it, the one who used to love the sun, mom, dad, family, laughter, this very world — is suffocating.

I wrote these poems to *prokynutysia* — to wake up from drones, from falsehood, from acid love, from prayers that go unanswered.

In this book: war, God and His silence, demons, puppies in a basement, death, loneliness. And — against all odds — the will to live. Morning. A smile to the sky.

Life is not when the pain ends. It's when you rise after the collapse and say: *I choose this dawn.*

Read them out of order. The darkness here is real. And so is the light.

*Zaporizhzhia — Kyiv — Odesa — Tashkent — 2002–2026*