Lyuba Yakimchuk is a Ukrainian poet, playwright, and screenwriter. She has been named one of the hundred most influential people in the arts in Ukraine by the magazine The New Voice of Ukraine. 

Yakimchuk has published two books of poetry: Like FASHION and Apricots of Donbas. The latter was written in the first years of the Russian war on Ukraine and received the International Poetic Award of the Kovalev Foundation in New York. 

Sharing her poem, “I have a crisis for you” which is translated by Svetlana Lavochkina. 

you lit up a cigarette 
but it wouldn’t burn 
it was summer 
and girls would light up from any passer-by 
but I didn’t light up from you anymore

—our love’s gone missing, I explain to a friend 
it vanished in one of the wars 
we waged in our kitchen 
—change the word ‘war’ to ‘crisis,’ he suggests 
because a crisis is something everyone has from time to time

remember the Second World Crisis? 
correspondingly, also the First World 
Civil Crisis—to each his own 
I forgot about the Cold Crisis 
it seems they also came in twos 
also the Uprising Crisis it sounds so good— 
the Uprising Crisis of 1648–1657 
write it down in the textbooks 
a crisis that liberates releases forever

my great-grandfather fell in the Second World Crisis 
possibly by the hand of my other great-grandfather 
or his machine gun 
or his battle tank 
but it is unclear 
how they conducted this crisis with each other 
perhaps it was the crisis itself that killed them, like a plague 
for nobody is to blame 
for the crisis it is inexorable like death

and when our own domestic war 
turns into a crisis 
does it get better? 
does it hurt less?
do birds come back to us from the south 
or maybe, we come out to meet them? 
why is our language like that— 
we lack words to describe our feelings 
only crisis and love are left as antonyms

but if love is bound to be so complicated 
with these blazes and smolderings 
like blood and pain 
(and blood is not like periods 
but some new feeling of mine) 
(and pain is yours) 
if love is made up 
of two different feelings 
then soon love will also be called crisis

I have a crisis for you, darling 
let’s get married 
it’ll be easier for us 

both we’ve got a crisis 
we’d better split up