My child has four teeth. If she wants to get somewhere badly enough she’ll drag herself across the smooth slats of the hardwood. She is vulnerability and determination personified; she is the purest form of human. She doesn’t believe in the silent treatment. The only thing funnier than a dog standing on two legs like a human, is your face getting further away and then closer again. To her, leaving is a hilarious and temporary game. She doesn’t know about the adult world of leaving, how very serious it can be. I wish I could glue a magnet to this tiny parenting trophy to stick it on my refrigerator: Award for Keeping Distance a Silly Game. She passes me her toys with a wide-eyed gesture, offers me a nibble of her toes, wholly unafraid of theft. Everything is given freely, for nothing given in earnest can be taken away. These are our toys. This is our love. It goes round and round in a circle and loses nothing in the exchange. We’ve discovered the perpetual motion machine. It is family. It is us.
Svetlana Litvinchuk is the author of Navigating the Hallways by Starlight (Fernwood Press 2026), her debut poetry collection, and the poetry chapbook Only a Season (Bottlecap Features 2024). Nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, and a finalist for the Slippery Elm Poetry Prize, her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Pleiades, swamp pink, Flyway, About Place, Moon City Review, ANMLY, Lake Effect, Arkana, and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of ONLY POEMS and an editor for Rockvale Review. Originally from Ukraine, she now tends her garden in Missouri. Find her on Instagram @s.litvinchuk and svetlanalitvinchuk.com.
Image: “Baby Manual 1,” a found image
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