A Letter to My Love

Category B: Third Place (2026) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Evie Jackson

My Dearest Nikoli,

If this letter has reached you, it means the sun has already risen on the day they have chosen for my death. I imagine you sitting by the window, the one that looks out towards the ash tree, your hands folded in your lap the way they do when you are thinking deeply. I pray you are not alone. I pray someone thought to bring you company.

I have been many things in this war; a nurse, a dutiful wife, a loyal subject of Soviet Russia. But never honest to you about the one thing that truly mattered. Forgive me for that. When they drafted me, I told myself I could bear the blood, the broken bodies, the endless procession of boys who would never see home again. I told myself that I could be strong enough for the both of us. But the truth is, Nikoli, I could not stand the sight of loss anymore. Not for a country that asks so much yet gives so little back. Not when every face I tended to reminds me of the life we were supposed to have.

So I rebelled.

Not in anger, not in hatred, but in the only way I knew how; I picked up a rifle and stepped into the mud beside the men that were dying anyway. I fought because I could not bear to see another boy bleed out while I held only bandages. I fought because I wanted to believe that I could carve out even a small corner of safety for you, for us, for the world we dreamed of before the war swallowed it whole.

They say I helped win battles I was never supposed to be in. They say I saved lives I had no right to stand beside. They say I broke the law, and they are correct. But I would break it again, a thousand times over, if it meant one less widow, one less mother receiving a folded flag.

The head of the Soviet army looked at me this morning with something like pity. He told me bravery does not excuse disobedience. I told him disobedience was the only form of bravery left.

Do not let them make you ashamed of me.

I know you, Nikoli. I know you’ll try to shoulder this as another burden, another weight your body cannot carry but your heart insists upon. Do not. My rebellion was mine alone. My death is mine alone. Your life— your beautiful, stubborn, gentle life— must continue without the shadow of my choices.

I only ask one thing of you, and it is this; do not remember me as a soldier, nor as a criminal, but as the woman who loved you fiercely enough to fight for a world where you may live in peace.

The guards are coming, I can hear their boots in the corridor. I am not afraid. I only wish for one more evening with you, one more quiet hour with your hand in mine.

Goodbye, My love
Forgive me.
Remember me.
Live for me.

- Yelena