A large stone had an ear and stood in the middle of the trees. The trees looked down at the stone and touched it with their branches. From time to time, hares and squirrels would come running from the forest.
In the morning, I would go out to the balcony of the house to drink coffee and watch them. I could see how the stone was draining my tension, fear for my life, nightly waking up from sirens, the sounds of Russian missiles over my house, explosions near my house, the fear of my animals.
It was all coming out of me, flowing out, draining out. My body was shaking with the tension that could finally come out. And I let it be. For as long as it took.
And when the anxiety came out and the stone took it, it directed it to the core of the earth. There, the anxiety burned and nothing remained of it. And the snowbirds came. I had only seen pictures of them in children's books. The snowbirds came to swim in the pond near the stone, to wash their red bellies.