Svetlana Litvinchuk

Motherhood Half-Dream

My heart is an open ocean. Off and on somewhere a lighthouse blinks, guides the stars of my stomach home. My ears continue beating unheard against a cliff. Though I’m blessed with eyes, they make me itch before the horizon’s tense, hopeful water. I am a shifting shape, an amorphous figure above a landscape constructed of sharp glassy sand.

Pain is the opposite of sleep. Deep inside the complex physical body, pain demands to be felt, each cell waving so many hands, pain demands contact, engagement. Intimacy. The nourishment stored in my breasts feels like pinpricks.

Reminders of the past are the trouble with healing. Scars are forever. Their knotted strength creates weakness in healthy tissue. Remember: surrender is not peace.

My power is a body with no skin. To feel it all is a gift. A beauty-less sunset stabs through me like a mosquito. Does it extract or deposit? We cannot know our future until eyes form where stars once were. Only water is needed. The Earth’s belly fills up with rain, and eventually, something gestates.

I am a willing garden. Seeds skip the flower stage, touch me, and wilt. Sedentary dreams die before the first breath. I’d like to believe there is always some part of you floating around in me. Vestigial.

My fields burn, rebirthing new grasses. The ash of me travels for many miles.

All the things we must do over we call either practice or experiment. They tell me I’m one step closer to perfect for all my trying. I look the same.

Life begins and ends without commencement. Quiet. Vast.

Rapid growth sometimes means time moving backwards.

Does it hurt—
this constant expansion
of the universe?

Svetlana Litvinchuk is the author of a poetry chapbook, Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024) and a forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Navigating the Hallways by Starlight (spring 2026). Nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, and a finalist for the Slippery Elm Poetry Prize, her poetry appears in ANMLY, swamp pink, About Place, Strange Horizons, Rust + Moth, Sky Island Journal, Arkana, and elsewhere. She is the Managing Editor of ONLY POEMS and a Guest Editor for Rockvale Review in 2025. Find her on Instagram @s.litvinchuk and www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com