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Elena Gabriela Coicea, 15 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Borcea, Călărași County, Romania. We are grateful for the participation and wish her success.

Solitude

People tend to believe that without a pack you cannot survive, and perhaps it is true, but there is a difference between how each individual finds himself within the infinite horizons of this world. Some find themselves in the loudness of a crowd, others in the quiet moments alone. Alone, not lonely. People often mistake being alone for being lonely, and even though they follow the same path from their origins, there is a crossroads that separates their existence forever.
 You can be lonely in a crowd, yet accompanied by silence, and vice versa.
These individuals who choose to live such solitary lives could be considered outsiders, yet they are everywhere around you; they walk the same paths and breathe the same air as anyone else. It is believed they see life in gray tones but their perspective upon it is so vividly bright, as they can contemplate the bigger picture, the assembly rather than on just one corner.

There was once upon a time an empty bench. 
Who could have ever even thought that a simple bench lost in a small, forgotten by the human pace alley could hold such deep meaning within its existence!? 
Well, after all, it is not about the things themselves but rather about the crumbles of souls with whom they interacted.
And there comes the question, what's the story behind this bench? Why is it empty?  Has anyone ever sat on it since its appearance? Or was it always a haunted place that the human souls were not brave enough to reach?
The irony of things is that it was everything; it wasn't darkness or light, it was both. Somehow, through ways beyond human logic, it was empty and full at the same peculiar time. It was both haunted and enchanted.
Years ago, when the Balkan peninsula was „the powder keg of Europe Bank" when suffragettes were gaining a voice for women's rights, when Queen Victoria was on the right honorable throne of England, when Europe itself was a brewing cauldron of both traditionalism past falling asleep and modernism future awaking; in all the noise of the world, two poor kids, with dirty clothes and mudded faces, a boy and a girl, about the same age, met on a street covered in shadows, both sitting on one corner of the only bench existent there.
Why were they there? Maybe looking for a brief moment of quietness in the mess of the loud crowd, of their souls. Both looking for peace. Even if just for a moment.
When their eyes met, everything around them froze. They, every single whisper, every sound of human movement; everything just froze. 
Hi(hi) said them at the same time.
You might expect a big deep conversation to flow from this moment forward, but even if their inner rivers of feelings were so agitated and full of thoughts, their mouths did not utter any more words.
Nothing.
But through some weird and unexplainable, beyond words connection, they agreed to meet right on that spot, the following day.
They left, but in their innocent, fragile minds and hearts, the eyes of the other were glowing in an etheric light.
There came the next day. Neither of them showed up. Except maybe for the bench. All the quietness and solitude that were broken yesterday even for a second, ruled now over everything. Every single sound or resemblance of it. And that lack of life, of presence, defined the alley and its bench for years to come.
Weeks passed, then they turned into months, into years, decades…
Looking at the big picture, nothing much happened, only 2 world wars and entire pages of history that are dead after all, as I used to hear someone saying.
Yet that alley remained unchanged, as it would have been frozen in time, preserving its existence for its destined purpose.
And one day steps met the pavement again. Or better said their once material resemblance did.
2 figures with a rather ghostly, shadowy existence were walking, or floating? Towards the bench.
One was an old man with the appearance of a respectful gentleman, and the other was a lady, portraying a once flourishing beauty, encrusted with waves of time.   
They sat down.
They turned towards each other. Their gazes met. Their eyes met. Their souls met. 
Once again.
Everything changed. Their appearance, their prospects, their lives. Yet their eyes had the same…light.



When you're alone you're part of every single thing around you. You don't belong to one group, but to all of them, you are in the trees, in the breeze, in the sky, in the earth, in the smiles, and in the cries, they are part of you just as you are part of them.

You may think of them as mere spectators of life, yet to think of life as a play, a game, directed by a predefined script, in the first place, it's a discreditation to every law of nature. Life isn't the actors playing their roles on the stage, with costumes and words chosen by a higher power, life is that candelabra that suddenly breaks and falls. The screams, the hysterical senses, the confusion of what comes next, all that mess, that is life. That's the most perfect aspect of life, it's exact asymmetry.

As such, what do these sorts of people need? They certainly do not need their stunning painting of life to be shattered in pieces, but a soul that mirrors theirs, with whom they can share their solitude. The one final detail that makes the masterpiece whole. In broad daylight who blinds you, they need their sunset and sunrise that they can see clearly in all of its divine touch/beauty, that sunshine that illuminates only them, who has eyes only for them, a unique and special one that is not gifted to those around them.