June 2026

poetry

The name of the nameless

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Like the escaping sand time, the trap for the survivor slams shut. Fear is like a bird cornered 
in a room in tight dust that can never be drunk. This swan thirst for silence that can never be 
quenched and only death. And only death opens new sounds of old walls. In these walls, my 
love languishes like a tulip in a greenhouse. Like blood in veins, like walls in a ruined house, 
so my love is kept. This bird has no beak and no key. Nothing can be drunk or opened except 
death. And death is just a music box at the bottom of which a bottomless secret is kept. This 
is not love. This is not happiness. I do not know what is kept at the bottom of the music box 
and perhaps I have gone deaf. Swallow this sounding pain because there is nothing left of the 
candy of lips. Bony palms and humble knuckles gave me the last sips of hope. The corner of 
my mouth sharpened cruelly. I love you. I love you. Another man on another street that I 
love. I love men. I am porcelain. I am broken porcelain. I hate men. Another man who turned 
out to be a random passerby. But what about love? I want to kill the love inside my heavy, 
stone-weary chest. But fear is like a bird tangled in the hair of my room. This bird flounders 
and tries to flap its wings as if it knows what death is. Death is nothing more than a set of 
letters of the Babylonian alphabet of the unknown. And the window is open. 

mykyta-ryzhykh
Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh (he him) is an author from Ukraine, now living in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and many others.
 
 
 
 

More work by Mykyta Ryzhykh

1968 - 2026

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