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Andreea Gabriela Popescu, 22 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Bucharest, Romania. We are grateful for the participation and wish her success.
Citrus & Smoke
His hands smelled of citrus—sharp, sweet, deceptive.
The scent clung to my skin long after he left,
a ghost of something I wished had been real.
Soft palms, impossibly smooth,
running over my skin like a lullaby,
like a song he played too many times
to still feel its meaning.
But there were moments—
little stolen sunbeams between the storms.
Him, standing in his kitchen at sunrise,
bare-chested, hair a mess,
fingers lazily stirring sugar into his coffee.
Steam curled around his knuckles
as he passed me the mug,
letting his fingers linger on mine,
his touch so warm it almost felt like love.
The way he swayed with me in the same room,
humming a song I didn’t know,
his cigarette smoldering in an ashtray nearby.
How his hands danced over those melodic strings,
lazy chords filling the air between us,
the sound of something that felt like home.
I held onto those moments like a fool,
mistaking his warmth for permanence,
his fleeting touches for devotion.
Because when he touched me, he was tender,
thumbs brushing my lips like he was memorizing them,
fingers skimming my spine like he was writing poetry
without ever saying a word.
But love never lived in his hands,
only habit.
Because then came the nights when his hands
were only meant to take—
grasping, pulling, claiming,
his breath laced with smoke and something unspoken.
He touched me like I was his,
but he never stayed long enough to be mine.
And then, like always, he would leave.
No words, no warnings—
just the scent of citrus on my sheets,
ashes in the tray,
the ache of hands that had only borrowed me for a night.
Still, I waited.
Because when he returned, as he always did,
with soft hands and an easy smile,
I let him.
Because love—
even when it’s only an illusion—
is a hard thing to unlearn.
Oleander
You bloomed in the heat of my wanting—
all pink poison and whispered pause,
a flower too exquisite to fear,
too fatal to love.
You arrived like dusk in a borrowed season,
bare-chested and gold-lit,
citrus on your breath,
offering mornings you never meant
to see through.
Your hands were soft—
like lullabies sung without feeling,
like scripture recited by memory,not belief.
And I—
I listened anyway.
There were moments—
fragments of almost-love—
your fingers brushing mine
as if they might stay,
a hum in your throat
that I mistook for belonging.
I clung to those seconds
like petals pressed between pages,
fooling myself into thinking
they’d outlast the turning.
But you were never mine.
Not in the way rivers are never owned
by the stones they touch.
Not in the way music
belongs to silence once it ends.
My tears dried in your absence—
salt crystallized
where affection used to live.
Hope, that stubborn bloom,
kept rising through the cracks
of what we never were.
Oleander—
you taught me
that beauty can be hollow,
and love,
a mirage that begs to be chased
until the soul blisters.
Still, I waited.
Not for you,
but for the echo of you—
the warmth before the withdrawal,
the ghost of something soft
that never meant to stay.
And I,
lover of illusions,
learned to call the ache
a lesson.
What Makes Me a Monster?
(a monologue in echoes of old meaning)
They call me monster.
A word born from omen,
from fear stitched into the fabric of skin
not quite like theirs.
Once, it meant a sign —
a prodigy of nature,
a warning written in flesh,
as if my form could summon storms
or split the heavens.
Is it the way I move?
The curve of thought in my silence?
Do I blink wrong, speak crooked,
breathe too loud in a world that thrives on echoes?
They call me monster.
Do they see a centaur in my soul,
a chimera in my kindness,
some fabulous beast sewn from mismatched parts?
Is it that I don’t match?
I find peace in the rustle of leaves,
comfort in the hum of bees,
safety in the presence of a cat
who asks for nothing
but simply is.
That’s where I breathe.
Is that monstrous?
They say I’m vast—
too much.
Too feeling, too strange,
too honest for their polished rooms.
Is it monstrous to love the rain
as it wraps my skin in warmth
and wish, just once,
someone would feel that with me?
I cannot lie, not easily—
my truth doesn’t bend like theirs.
My joy isn’t loud, my pain not quiet.
Is that why they shrink from me?
They call me monster.
Not creature. Not soul.
Monster—
like Grendel, the aglæca,
the calamity hiding in the mist,
not because I harmed
but because I am.
Tell me—
what did I do
but exist
a little differently?
Is it my love, so full it frightens them?
Is it that I see the world not in lines,
but spirals, webs,
the dance of beetles beneath bark,
the wisdom in moss?
What makes me a monster
when all I’ve done is
be?
I am not claws.
I am not fangs.
I am not horror.
I am just
a humanoid
with too much soul
for small rooms.
So what is it?
What makes me
so feared,
so other,
so… monstrous?