It goes like an airplane by the name of Antonov-225, though better christened by its creators 'Mriya', after the Ukrainian word for a dream.

In Soviet foundries they rolled steel into the shape of you. You are longer than the Wright brothers' first flight, heaviest among your sisters to ever fly, swan-bellied, on the eve of empire. There is no elegance to my words here; you must forgive me; there is no elegance to scale.

The doomed shuttle 'Buran' rode atop you once, maybe twice, before it fell apart in a storage shed from parental neglect. We put these things together, bolt by bolt, strut by strut, that they may make something of ourselves for another time, a farce perched on a farce. A dream perched on a dream.

At the Battle of Hostomel in 2022, you too are undone by your mother -- this time, through rocket fire. This too, I mourn.

Following your destruction, a spokesperson said: "It's impossible to talk about the [...] restoration of this aircraft -- we can only talk about the construction of another Mriya, using individual components that can be salvaged from the wreckage and recombined with those that were, back in the 1980s, intended for the construction of a second aircraft."

As with a plane named for a dream, to make yourself from the wreckage of yourself... is one of the small mercies.

Broad-shouldered, angled angel, you are not built for war! Years earlier, intuiting this loss, I cloaked myself in memories of you, trying to find your trace in the bitcrushed grey of an airshow, trailing spent film like ribbons across the Scottish sky.

I witnessed you then, the carapace of your jacket gleaming. Tremble and growl, the sweep of your wing, the diesel of you. Your voice dips through the fog, and the runway erupts into cheers.

When first I heard the news of you, I crumpled like a spent thing.

Mriya you mother, I am munition, I am your maid. I hold you still in the melancholy yellow of the train, in the back of the bar, I hold you still in the black canister of my hope. We make ourselves from the wreckage of ourselves, we name ourselves from the names we hear in our dreams.

Listen!

The history of us is the history of trying again.

The history of flight is the history of trying again.

Here's to bigger things than us. Amen.