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Șerban-Zlatomir Miclăuș, 23 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Ghiroda, Timiș County, Romania. We are grateful for the participation and wish it success.

1. If I were to bleed, my love…

I’d do it for those eyes of yours.
Those endless pools of emerald,
a-spark with shining veins of brass,
swirling wildly, glinting with want and desire
For those eyes of yours I’d sell my soul,
For all my blood would scarce suffice
The thirst for life that they inspire.

That they’d with their flame alight
Dark earthen abyss of mine,
Of forgotten embers cold, 
aflame anew
What immortal mind divine?

Two forlorn souls, set adrift
A starry sea of formless whispers.
Brought about one hand in other 
and tumultously entangled,
as if forged in heat of hellfire,
Like lightning splitting sky asunder.

Entrap me then, 
And in chains forsake my bleeding heart.
So ne’er again, in heaven’s name,
Should it be set adrift again.
For a better fate should be the shackles
Of your soul’s embrace.

So if I am to bleed, 
my love...
I’d stain the oceans red.
For there’d be no wound too great,
Your embrace should fail to mend.


2. Another piece

There are strands of you
entangled in my comb.
Lithe arteries pulsing with your memory.
Your veins seem entangled in my coat,
rogue red upon a woolen gray.
Your skin still lay beneath my pillow,
And your flesh lay spread across my sheets.

Glistening emerald specters,
Your eyes, still in my bathroom mirror
Greet me each day when I wake
My soap, chimerically transformed
It seems to carry now your scent

Your laughter calls across the hall
Urging me to move myself,
This ragged body
Cold and lonesome
To grasp onto the threads of life.

To comb my hair, to wash my face
To don my coat and step outside
Into the rain, the pouring rain.
The ever falling, icy rain.
The corroding, cutting, piercing,
sharp and painful, blasted rain!
To find another piece
of You.


3. It didn’t rain

I recall those days, for the sun was shining
Blisteringly hot and blinding.
Radiant.
Defiant of the freshly dug and lonesome grave,
Like a ready-made bed.

That first day it was sunny
I was a walking heatstroke,
It was a feverish ordeal,
And I was shivering and cold.
My heart must have been pumping,
I didn’t have time to check,
What time was it again?
The hours must have spilled between my fingers.

How dare you? God, you, the both of you
How can you sit there so inanimate
GET UP!
Your lips, they looked so dry,
I wanted to rush for a cup of water
To lean in over, to gaze upon your pale visage and…
…all I could do was shake and weep.
To all these people that surrounded me
I offered wine and water, and yet
It was you who looked so parched,
and I couldn’t just…

I was already rushing someplace else,
Some more attendants were coming (or going?)
Death is a logistical business, you see?
You ought to play a good host.
And it was all happening at once.
I ran an hour late, coming and going
She came and waited for me
at the foot of the grave.
And in spite of making her wait,
She smiled.
How awkward…
To meet her at that side of the grave.
Though it was then when her smile was sweetest,
warmest and most sincere; oh had I known…

My ears were booming, that’s when I realized
My heart must have been beating all this time.
So feverish, the sun…
And must they all stay there and see me weep?
I wish the ground would swallow me instead of him
But what would my mother say?
Would she have tears left to weep?
He was strong, that’s what they all said and…oh the attendants
When will this all be over?

It was shining on the second day,
Still shining.
I was getting used to it,
the same blood-boiling rhythm,
the crowds and all the noise.
My feet were blistered from the running,
But what of after? When it’ll be still and silent?

Then the third day came, and they trickled in
like clouds upon a barren sky.
I remember their poor miserable faces,
The awkwardness and pain
Does it hurt to bear witness to it all? It must, I’m sorry…
A glass of water? No?
God how much they hated being there, and there they stood
Alongside me, they braved the grave and peered within.
And then they threw flowers upon it.

The grave’s earth looked now less lonesome
And I found the time to cry twice:
Once during the eulogy,
And once when they lowered him beneath the earth.
And then it started raining.
And it kept raining.
And I’m not sure it ever stopped.