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Ionela Bulza, 23 years old, is participating in the 6th International Literary Creation Competition, from Băleni, Galați County, Romania. We are grateful for the participation and wish her success.

Enjoy the reading of her 3 poems:

I wish I’d met you at dawn
If only I could be the earth
There’s no cure for life, babe

I wish I’d met you in the hush of dawn’s first light,
when you didn’t know yourself,
and your words hadn’t yet nested in the back of my mind.

To see you waking up in the morning,
walking the dogs,
taking a dive into the frozen sea.

To run my hands through your hair,
and capture your wistful smile when you got the blues.
To take a deep dive within you—
at the cost of my own sanity.
Your mind: not a bad place to die, if you ask me.

To feel the grass under our feet, and breathe it all out
while tending to our roots
in the perpetual midday rain.
To laugh it all out in the afternoon,
or burn it down to ashes.

To fill your empty space,
and be the aoibhneas to your áthas.
But by the time we crossed eyes,
the dusk had already settled in.

And all I could do until the darkness came—
was hum.
-	I wish I'd met you at dawn


The skies broke loose today,
rumbling thunder growling above,
raindrops dancing on the concrete below,
crying a song about the lost—
while I'm eating plums on my porch.

A little dove hums,
standing on a pole,
embracing the scorching strike of lightning
urging swallows to fly hazardously,
and seek in despair the refuge of their nests.

If only I could be the earth—
dampened black dirt—
to always bury it all under my coat,
to decompose and nurture,
to let it rest and give it time
to flourish once more.
-	If only I could be the earth


I waited all night for you, babe
still in front of my window,
humming with the shadows,
and wearing my skin as you used to 
- with my hands over my chest 
as if urging the lungs to grasp for air 
and the heart to hang between them. 

But not today, babe
when the light dies,
I open the window
and I take in the coldness of air,
the black of the night, under the moonlight 
with my arms wide open.

I let it run through my blood,
baptising my body and mind,
until it blooms into the soul.

Eventually, you know 
the flower let itself be ripped 
it shined radiantly,
engulfed in amber darkness, 
beautifully macabre.

And by no big words, you know
no I'd love you in every universe 
no quantum entanglement whatsoever,
just by a dude who smashed the window 
built a door 
and wrote "There's no cure for life, babe" on it. 
-	 There's no cure for life, babe