Svetlana Litvinchuk
Cicada Year II
In between my waiting for you
to die and for a baby to be born,
in her 53rd hour of labor,
I went to bury my hands
in the garden, just in time to hear
the crash of a tree abandon its sky,
surrendering to the weight
of a rainstorm.
I can’t bring myself to pull
up your roots, Dad.
I’d rather plant right over them
and see which wild, unnamable
thing in me survives.
If I garden by the creek it smells
just like we’re fishing again.
I can crouch in the water hemlock
and imagine what this life is to a cicada
in its frenzy to plant itself inside
the exile of tree xylem.
Screaming for survival,
clinging to tall grass—
extremely loud
for saying nothing at all.
After all, their lives resemble
nothing like the ones where we
bake bread and sing songs and braid
each other’s hair,
and our own is not anything
like being a plaything in a universe
that is really the mouth of a cat,
is it?
to die and for a baby to be born,
in her 53rd hour of labor,
I went to bury my hands
in the garden, just in time to hear
the crash of a tree abandon its sky,
surrendering to the weight
of a rainstorm.
I can’t bring myself to pull
up your roots, Dad.
I’d rather plant right over them
and see which wild, unnamable
thing in me survives.
If I garden by the creek it smells
just like we’re fishing again.
I can crouch in the water hemlock
and imagine what this life is to a cicada
in its frenzy to plant itself inside
the exile of tree xylem.
Screaming for survival,
clinging to tall grass—
extremely loud
for saying nothing at all.
After all, their lives resemble
nothing like the ones where we
bake bread and sing songs and braid
each other’s hair,
and our own is not anything
like being a plaything in a universe
that is really the mouth of a cat,
is it?
Hospice at home
It’s a purgatory
unspoken of by Dante
to lie in your own bed
next to your own wife
after 44 years of marriage
becoming a stranger
to your body—a gradual process,
telling her to turn on the tv,
over and over, even though it’s already on,
blaring for so many years
it recedes into the white noise
of drywall
to watch the fat melt
inside your hands—
softer now than they’ve ever been
even as they grow sharp,
the bones protrude, pronounced,
draped in delicate skin
brittle as paper, taut and friable
the fingernails caked
with something dark, unnoticed
your wife has had so much
on her mind, how can she handle
it all—the loss of you
you don’t think about that you-
shaped dent permanently embedded
into the marital mattress
as you shrink inside it
like a hunk of soap in its dish
so that when you say, “who’s dying?
I’m not dying”
she believes it—
you both believe,
up to the final moments
that you can keep living
like this forever.
unspoken of by Dante
to lie in your own bed
next to your own wife
after 44 years of marriage
becoming a stranger
to your body—a gradual process,
telling her to turn on the tv,
over and over, even though it’s already on,
blaring for so many years
it recedes into the white noise
of drywall
to watch the fat melt
inside your hands—
softer now than they’ve ever been
even as they grow sharp,
the bones protrude, pronounced,
draped in delicate skin
brittle as paper, taut and friable
the fingernails caked
with something dark, unnoticed
your wife has had so much
on her mind, how can she handle
it all—the loss of you
you don’t think about that you-
shaped dent permanently embedded
into the marital mattress
as you shrink inside it
like a hunk of soap in its dish
so that when you say, “who’s dying?
I’m not dying”
she believes it—
you both believe,
up to the final moments
that you can keep living
like this forever.
Svetlana Litvinchuk is anticipating the release of her debut collection, Navigating the Hallways by Starlight (Fernwood Press, September, 2026). Nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Rhysling Awards, her poetry and essays appear in Pleiades, New Orleans Review, swamp pink, Redivider, ONLY POEMS, and elsewhere. She revels in hiking barefoot, preferably near moss and seawater. Originally from Ukraine, she is currently mid-move to Vancouver Island.
Instagram: @s.litvinchuk
www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com
Instagram: @s.litvinchuk
www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com
