A Letter to My Favorite Drug

Accustomed to ending the day on a high note

In the most artificial way possible,

Rising up out of my body

Through elevated corporal cravings.

But sometimes you show up and disrupt

My habitual rituals of obituary-courting,

Your sheer presence rendering me euphoric

Before you’ve spoken a single word.

Yes, the freedom to converse through silence

Is a most precious one indeed,

Raising and lowering my blood pressure

With simultaneous tenderness.

Three hours seem like one

Which of course is not enough

To savor the indispensably insignificant details,

The essential nonessentials.

Go to bed later, wake up earlier,

Energized by our low-energy synergy

And wishing I could imbibe your magic potion

Every day of the week.

The Silence In Between

Woke up at 1 AM

To a cacophony of moans

Almost shattering the window

With operatic decibels.

Good for them,

Bad for me

Still barely fresh

From a pre-sleep fantasy.

Calculated their level of closeness

By listening for the silence in between,

The vulnerable moment

When the script turns into improv.

Shower came on quick enough;

Must have been successful

And a little bit stressful

Remembering each other’s names.

Then a sequel session

Shook the walls once more

But I stopped keeping score

Certain it would end with a closed door.

Nearby Farness

Hoodie to the left, hoodie to the right,

Shields against peripheral vision

So that beauty stays a question mark

Instead of a period.

Better to be trusted than loved

Although it’s nice if you can be both,

Blessed with distant proximity

And nearby farness.

Crumbs of conversation

Scattered in an imaginary forest

Where people require other people

To find their way back home.

Some get their kicks on what-if situations,

Taking communion at the Church of Friday Night

In which bartenders consecrate a glass of California wine

While choirs sing “Sweet Caroline” with no-strings-attached ecstasy.

Others brand themselves as stubborn dreamers

Refusing to search for what refuses to approach them

Without considering the possibility

They’re too well-hidden to be found.

Hoodie up above, hoodie down below,

Angels and mortals locked in a staring contest

Destined to continue for eternity

Since they’re both afraid of flashing their eyes.

Showed Promise

Stumbled across the obituary at precisely 12:00,

The usual time for mid-year New Year’s resolutions

As the drunkenness turns to queasiness

And the pleasure starts to sting.

26 and two days counting;

Didn’t even have the glory of 27,

Just a halfway thought-out header

That read, “Showed Promise.”

Showed promise for what exactly?

Capitalistic success?

Perhaps a Wikipedia page

Or picture on a restaurant wall?

Anyhow, it didn’t matter;

Whatever promise was shown had faded

Unless there was an accompanying suicide note

To inspire posthumous adulation.

Wandered to the cemetery the next morning,

Paid respects from a stranger

Which are sometimes sincerer

Than the rehearsed well-wishes of a friend.

Assured him he was more

Than what he had not yet become

And that what he already was

Was all he ever needed to be.

Big Sister

The tiny head had been there for more than an hour

And would likely remain until the train stopped,

Ejecting them both onto a crowded platform

Full of 9-to-5 fighters and 5-to-9 nurturers.

She of course belonged to the latter group,

An invisible angel seen as just another tired face

Accustomed to questions and quests for answers

That even her parents couldn’t fulfill.

Tried to hide the number of times she cried in a day,

Microchipping Kleenex into her eyes

But was frequently met by the sudden surprise

Of an old lady staring sympathetically.

No sympathy was required though,

No hand-me-down advice;

The source of her fragility

Was also the source of her strength.

Which didn’t stop her from doubting

The legitimacy of that tiny head

Gracing her shoulders with trust

She feared she couldn’t live up to.

An Expected End

He’s uninstalled 

The Tinder app

From his phone,

His journey

On a road to nowhere

Has come to 

Its expected end.

Taylor Dibbert is a poet in Washington, DC. He’s author of, most recently, “Takoma.”

I WEAR YOUR NET

Empires live by iron and corn

and die in marble and famine.

You brought the starvation and war

that harbingered this, my ruin.

I cannot take my rightful throne;

you hold robe and crown and scepter.

All of my ghosts are made of stone.

I’m the quarry, you’re the sculptor.

When someone asks me why I wear

your net? I thought it my ladder.

I aspire into stratosphere

but you keep me in your cellar.

My voice and my vision are lost

among your parrots and mirrors.

You use your dust and mist and rust

to confuse merit with error.

SOME HORIZON

A poet sits next to G. B. Shaw, unopened.

Poet has no mind to drive his pen.

A momentary rickshaw draws from the mist

but is swallowed back in fog with a stumble and list.

Flirtatious Alpha Centauri beckons to the telescopes

but poet’s flaccid astronomer fails to focus.

All the usual muses are asleep,

the whiskey and the mistresses, strangers in the street;

neither the etchings on the walls nor the scrimshaw on the shelf

volunteer to help.

Empty poet begs along the Word,

laments poetry’s place as kickshaw at the smorgasbord.

And then — poet imagines

Humanity in its dungeon —

unbathed – hungry as a blight —

encaged in rags — in a hint of sunlight —

a detested defiled diseased

tenement for generations of fleas —

the cell’s metal, complicit embrace of laxity —

a skeletal thread against a mildew tapestry —

cornucopia of hopeless hope

that even a poor pen surpasses the sturdy rope,

that any desperate continuing

improves on the endless end,

–that hacksaws and pardons

may exist on some horizon,

dandelion the shackles,

and be lion to jackals.

ERGONOMICS

Sitting aside the curb a=nursing coffee and croissants, I can’t help but marvel at couples passing by. Nearly every boy is just-high enough that her head lies snugly in the fit between his face and shoulder. And this inexorably leads me to reminisce about baseballs, how they used to lodge so comfortably in my fingers’ arc, precisely like the exact hyperbole of your remembered breast.

FRENCH KISS, 1789

A girl like a powdered queen.

Man massive and lean.

A love like a guillotine.

As mundane, as keen.

BLACKENING FACTORY

Magpies harangue

jewelled peacocks

to picket the sky.

The river smiles

below

the pier.

The machinery of sex

processes

our progeny.

Silent silver moonface

ticks

toward overtime.

Dusk goes dark goes dawn goes day goes dusk.

The highway

prays toward

E N dl es ss s::

perspective. Every exit

becomes

just

another

road

City of Others

Three flash-fictions,

More than 90% contents was created by AI [prompt]

1. The Ministry of Lost Things

On the third sublevel of City Hall, where ventilation schematics have long since been swallowed by time, there is an office no one ever asks about.

The Ministry of Lost Things.

It appears on no building plan, yet boxes are constantly being delivered there.

Inside: socks, buttons, names of dead cats, lost dreams, forgotten keys to apartments that no longer exist.

The Minister is a pale man in a dark suit, with a face that seems slightly unfinished — as if the sculptor gave up halfway through.

He never lifts his eyes. He only whispers:

— What have you lost?

The clients vary. Some are looking for umbrellas. Some — for childhood.

One man returned for three years in a row, looking for his lost sense of humor, but each time he received only a receipt… and the faint sound of laughter behind the wall.

— We don’t return things, — they told him.

— We only register the absence.

One day, a child came in. He held a handful of air.

— This was my imaginary friend, — he said. — He disappeared when I grew up.

The Minister looked up from his papers.

For the first time ever.

— You don’t understand, — he said. — You disappeared.

And he just stayed… waiting.

2. The Letter That Never Arrived

Every morning, Edith came to the post office looking for a letter. Since 1957.

She would arrive precisely at 9:03, in a gray coat with a pearl button, walk up to the window, and say the same phrase:

— “Perhaps today.”

Young clerks came and went, aged, retired.

Only Danny — now gray and hunched — remembered that once, in 1957, she really did receive a letter.

She opened it, read it… and froze.

The next day, she came again.

— “Perhaps today,” she said, as if nothing had happened. And she kept coming.

No one knew who the letter had been from.

No one knew what it said.

And she never told.

On her table at home stood a crystal vase. Inside — carefully folded, yellowed with time — was the envelope. Opened. Empty.

3. Dream Registration

A new department opened in the city. Not for complaints, not for taxes. For the registration of dreams.

— Not a storyline, but the right to one, — explained the clerk.

— So that no one later appears in your dreams without permission.

The first to come was a man who, every night, dreamt of the same woman. He didn’t know who she was, but every time he woke up in tears.

— I want to keep her for myself.

— Describe her.

He described her eyes, her voice, the moment of farewell. Without a word, the clerk handed him a form: “Dream No. 14382. Registered. Claims denied.”

Then came a woman who hadn’t dreamt anything in a long time. She demanded compensation.

— For the void.

— That’s not for us. That goes to the neighboring department.

In the corner sat a boy, drawing something on his palm.

— And what are you waiting for?

He didn’t look up.

— I was born in a dream. No one registered me.

By evening, a man in a suit arrived. There was a stamp on his forehead.

— I am a foreign dream. Someone invented me and then forgot about me. I want to be free.

The clerk sighed.

— That’s against the rules. If you become real — who will be held accountable?

— And what if no one answers? — asked the man.

Then the lights in the room went out, and no one ever woke up again.

Unwritten Letters

She thought about writing a letter for a long time.

But she never did.

She couldn’t even remember how many times she had picked up a piece of paper, twirled a pen between her fingers, searching for the heavy words in her heart. It felt like if she wrote them down, the weight inside her would become lighter. But the words never came.

It was as if each letter had to be torn from her heart, as if every sentence reopened an old wound.

So, she didn’t write.

Maybe she had to accept the emptiness inside her not as love, but as just another trial of fate.

For the first time, she had opened her heart, longing for affection. She had never received enough love from her family, always felt like an outsider, and had learned to swallow her feelings. And when she loved, she loved with her whole being—with every emotion she had carried since childhood.

The one she loved gave her warmth. He filled the empty spaces in her heart. A heart that had never known tenderness finally felt it for the first time.

But… life was cruel. Fate had chosen a different path for them.

She was in another land. Another city, different people, a foreign world. And more than anything, she needed warmth. But that warmth only existed in one person. He was the one who comforted her, who didn’t let her feel lost. With him, her world was bright.

But time passed, and she had to return home.

And when she came back… everything had changed.

They loved each other. But now, they could no longer protect their love. Distance, fate, reality, people—everything stood between them like a wall.

They parted ways.

From that day on, her life split into two.

On one side was her old self—the girl who longed for affection, who dreamed, who found happiness in little things.

On the other side was her new self—cold, distant, and perhaps even afraid of love.

She started living without love. No, not without love. She was alive, but inside, she was empty.

Because when she loved someone, she loved forever. That was just who she was.

She would watch her favorite movie over and over again.

She would listen to the same song for weeks.

She would wear the same outfit, refusing to replace it.

And when she loved someone—she loved them always.

That’s why she never buried her love.

She never spoke of it, never shared it with anyone.

She kept it inside.

Like an unwritten letter.

All she had left were memories.

The photos of them together.

The matching watches.

And the most precious thing of all—the flowers he had given her.

They were still with her.

The drawing he made never left her side.

Time passed. But she didn’t change. She buried herself in studies, set new goals.

She didn’t let anyone get close to her.

She became like a rose with thorns—beautiful from a distance, but ready to wound anyone who dared to come too close.

The letters she wanted to write were never written.

But they remained in her heart.

Every heart carries such unwritten letters.

Some people eventually burn them.

Some keep them forever.

And she… she is still keeping them.

Unwritten letters.

Unspoken words.

And now… she is afraid to remember.

Because remembering hurts too much.

Bokijonova Madinabonu Batirovna was born on 19th of May 2004 in Beshkapa mahalla, Qoshtepa district, Fergana region. She is currently a 3rd year student of the Faculty of Philology, Fergana State University, Russian language and literature. Several of her stories have been published in various magazines.