She’s already flying.

One second and she will gnaw through a chain between past and future.

The grass will burn green without getting old.

The yellow leaf will fall but won’t touch the ground.

She’s already flying.

One second and the thread is torn, and beads fall into oblivion:

unread books                                                              unplanted trees
                                               incomplete lessons
unfinished teas                                                 unsung songs
               unbought houses                ungifted flowers            

                unreached old ages                                unwatched movies
uninvented verses                unheard “yeses”                unheated breakfasts
               ungrated callouses                unrealized potentials
unplayed matches                                                             unstaged performances
unstarted surgeries                 undressed suits                unbuilt careers        

      unsaid “sorries”                unexplained wishes                   unstained bedsheets
                unresolved relationships
                                                                                               unborn children

She’s already flying.

Something very terrible will happen, and at the same time, nothing will happen.
Time will continue to flow.
Nature and people on the other side of Earth will wake up as if nothing happened

You are flying.

There is no time for even one breath.
We are people who are reflected on your surface, and many of us are colder and more soulless than you.
Past and future stuck together.

We yearn and mourn our past,
we hide behind ideas and dreams of the future,
and we are helpless before our present.

Svitlana Pavlyuchenkova, age forty-four, is from Donetsk, Ukraine and has been living in New York City since 2013. She studies with Corinne Butta at University Settlement Society, where Lucian Leung is the program director. Of her experience in the class, she says, “I am happy to be part of a diverse group of amazing writers from around the world.” She believes it is important to connect with others by feeling out one another’s differences and showing our strengths, and, in doing so, enrich one another and the surrounding world.