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Maria Sara Muntean, 16 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Timișoara, Romania. She is guided by Prof. Mariana Bosneac, Banat National College Timișoara. We are grateful for the participation and wish it success.

Anguish

It’s not a trend
it’s failure’s weight-
that presses against my chest.
At night it haunts me deeply,
eyelids thick as clothes wet with sobs-
eyes tracing cracks on the ceiling

My inside feels so empty-
my heart too, heavy
to beat for one more second.
My outside feels so full
of tears and trembling laughter,
screams and still silence.

The journey’s fun,
They said.
But they lost me on the way.
Stuck at the same old crossroads-
Two dim paths, neither welcoming,
Where my life first began to shatter.


Mask

The spotlight can’t melt this mask,
nor smear my real face-
disorganized layers of a self.

But maybe I can slip on a new dress,
paint bold makeup with defined grace,
clear my voice-
“To be or not to be?”

Line after line,
the spotlight blushes like the sun,
I stand a hero, more than a villain-
Though this persona was never mine
to begin.

The mask splits in two:
one laughs, one cries,
Yet at least now,
I feel – organized.


Hope

Hope is a curse:
The taste of an apple,
Inside Eden’s house.

Hope is a drug:
Fragments of heaven,
Placed in the devil’s mouth.

I swallow the H vitamins
Pills for the body,
Lies for the soul.
The prospect warns,
“Healing will hurt”,
But I’ve emptied the boxes,
Just to be eaten by moles.

Their teeth pierce my skin,
But it’s their wings
That land the final blow-
Soft as the hands
That offered me apples,
Hoping for my fall.

Funny-
I almost believed,
I had learned how to fly.