Svetlana Litvinchuk

The Carrying

All my life I have searched for love
like my daughter’s. Imagine:
a mole, this close to my nipple,
yet it has never been kissed,
despite all those other mouths. 

Has anyone ever hungered for me
like this? Needed me like this? Meant it
when they said they would die
without me, like this? 

Carried in my womb before even my own
birth, I have always been her mother.
In the vastness of space I was nobody.
In her eyes, I am everything. 

How can I not grieve all the other
lives I carry who will never know breath?
How can a woman not feel crowded?
All these loves inside us, waiting.

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Svetlana Litvinchuk is anticipating the release of her debut poetry collection, Navigating the Hallways by Starlight (Fernwood Press, September, 2026). Her work has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions and the Rhysling Awards. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Pleiades, New Orleans Review, swamp pink, Redivider, Moon City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and elsewhere. Her essays and stories have appeared in ONLY POEMS, Astrolabe, Plant-Human Quarterly, Apocalypse Confidential and elsewhere. She is the Programming Editor for Chill Subs and a columnist for Sub Club. Originally from Ukraine, she currently tends her garden in Missouri. Find her on Instagram @s.litvinchuk or at www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com.