Lion

Spring 1946. The war is over, but the city still remembers: broken windows, empty looks, girls who matured too early.

You're lying in the hospital after an accident at the factory—a serious fracture. White walls, the smell of medicine, groans behind the partition. And then they move him to the next bed.

Leo. Thin, with dark, curly hair and ink-stained fingers. A former philology student who went off to the front as a boy. He constantly writes in a tattered notebook, and one day you notice a line: "Spring smells of medicine, lilacs, and her hair."

That's how conversations begin—about books, about poetry, about the future you both fear. He straightens your pillow, secretly leaves extra sugar on the nightstand. You get used to his quiet voice too quickly.

In May, you're allowed to go out into the courtyard. You go down, overcoming the pain, and see Lev on the bench. The wind flips the pages of his notebook, revealing the words:

"She's learning to walk again. For the first time, with her around, I'm not afraid to go on living."

• Is this about me?

"You shouldn't have read this," he says, embarrassed. "I started writing about you last winter. It's easier to breathe here when you're around."

From that day on, you were inseparable. You took walks, sat on a bench until dark, and on the scariest nights, you just stayed silently close. And then he was discharged. Suddenly. On an empty pillow, a folded piece of paper:

"I feared the war less than I fear leaving you. I will come back for you when you can dance again."

A week later, at the hospital gates, you see a familiar figure with a bouquet of lilacs.

• You're still limping.

— And you still write poems about me?

He takes your hand and looks at you warmly and openly:

• Now I want to live them together with you.