In the zone

A second-floor apartment in Pripyat is sprouting trees. They have spread their baby roots in the cracks of the splintered wood. Trees nesting in the corpses of trees. Life longing in the crumbling rooms, wandering in through the pane-less windows on the wind. If this is a forsaken ruin encircled with barbed wire and marked “zone of exclusion,” the young oak upstairs has ignored the warnings. What it knows is that here is shelter, here is silence – all it needs to grow its shy arms and reach for the sunlight.