the crystal glass sat alone and empty on the window sill She watched it and studied the imprint of her lover’s lips and fingertips on it “Damn, I’ve never seen you empty,” she said to the glass. “How did we get here?” A good question, she realized. It probably starts from growing up with a mother who got beat up on the daily and took it all with a kind of furious pride. It probably starts with telling yourself that when you grow up you will do all in your power to not be like that woman. You’ll be the exact opposite. You won’t take no shit from no man. And you started your adulthood exactly like that. A bad bitch, as some would put it. So why didn’t it continue like that? How come when you met a fragile, damaged man instead of another tough guy, you not only…

yes, there are those days

when you lie

in bed

with palms under your head

and stare at the

cracks in the

ceiling

There were many cracks on

the kid’s

ceiling

and he watched them

imagining that

they were borders

between countries

He was looking upon

a world map

and he started naming

the countries

and their people

some were humans

and others

were beast folk

and fairies and demons

and the politics

between these countries

were quite shaky.

There were wars all

the time

and that was

easy to imagine,

for the background noise

of wars

was very vivid

just a door

away

It was getting

quite intense now

-BOGDAN DRAGOS

Bogdan Dragos supervises casinos for a gambling company, working twelve-hour shifts locked in a dark office full of TV monitors. There he mostly daydreams and writes poems and stories. He also manages a poetry blog