god’s ways by Bogdan Dragos

mornings aren’t made for
waking up,
he used to say.
In the morning
one should just start his
second sleep

there weren’t a lot of people
who heard him say
the words, but the few who did
dismissed them as
silly ramblings of a drunk

He was in his early thirties

breaking his back in manual labor
at a construction site
during the day
and getting wasted at night

He reached the point where
six beers were no longer
enough for a suitable high, yet the
hangover seemed to
never end

This morning too
he wouldn’t have woken up

work started only
at 1 PM

but somebody knocked on
his door
and was quite insistent

As he got out of bed
he stepped on a cracked beer
can and
cut his foot

started to hop around the room
and curse and throw
random stuff at the walls

Ready to give whoever knocked at his
door a bit of venom

but then he
opened and was met with
her

“Remember me?” the girl
asked through
an inquisitive grin, her eyes
looking down at his
bleeding foot

“Who in fuck’s name
are you? What d’ you want?”

“Um… to apologize? Yeah, I
wanted to apologize.
Are you okay?”

“Apologize
for wh…?”
In that moment he remembered

Some ten, twelve years ago
he stole that bag of
weed from her
and she got so angry she
told everybody he raped her

so they nearly lynched his ass
an’ he had to
run away on the other side
of the world

and now here she
was again

Can’t run from one’s past, but
“I ain’t done nothing!” he
shouted in her face. “And you know
it! You fucking know it!
Takes a special kind of piece of
crap to call theft a rape, you know?
And you are that
piece of crap, you know?”

“I do,” she said. “That’s why… I’m here,
I guess.”
She pointed down at his foot.
“You’re bleeding. Can I come in?”

“Why? So you’ll tell everybody again
that I’ve raped your crazy ass?”

“No. So I could talk to you
about what happened, and… Help you
with that injury, I guess.”

Well

God, it turns out, doesn’t want
people to be alone for
the rest of their lives

but God’s ways of bringing them
together
sure are weird

Six months later
they were married

Not because they loved each other
so much
but because she threatened to
yell ‘rape’ again if he
refused to make her his wife

“Joke’s on you, I guess,” he said. “I was
God’s loneliest and most
desperate motherfucker anyhow.”

“I know,” she said

and in that
moment
God’s brilliant masterplan
for his subjects
shone once more

Many thanks to LatinosUSA —English edition for featuring my poem, "god's ways"!

Check it out HERE!

Thank you!