they complete us by Bogdan Dragos

Dear readers

We have reached an agreement with Bogdan Dragos to publish the 5th series of his poems. We are grateful for his collaboration as we highlight that he has hundreds of readers who follow his publications every Wednesday.

Thank you Bogdan! —j re crivello (Director of Masticatores)

they complete us

"But real love," she says,
"is when you'd
sew your skin into
the skin of your lover to
become one.
If I could cut off
my arm
from the elbow
and cut yours off as well
and join them together
as one limb, I'd go for
it. I'd then follow
with the other
arm, then the legs,
and finally the chests and
the foreheads
and lips.
We'd die of course, but that
would be the
beauty of it. We'd die
together, as one.
We'd become a mass of filth
and puss and
rot and
eventually melt into a single
substance.
That would be heaven.
You'd do
that for me, wouldn't you,
darling?"

Lying in bed,
he removed the pillow
from his face. It did nothing
to silence her. Of course
it did nothing.
Because she was not real,
only in his head.
They were already one
and the same
and as one-and-the-same
as they could get.

"C'mon already!" she
shouted. "Say that
you love me too!"

"Uh, I do," he mumbled,
a hand rubbing
circles at his
right temple

"Of course you do!" she
said. "However, last morning
when you fell
asleep
somehow, for some
unthinkable reason, your
dreams were not of me. I don't
understand how
such a tragedy could
have
occurred.
It's hell!
The simple idea of separation
between the two
of us is hell, darling, and I
don't wanna abandon you
in hell.
Don't worry. I'll keep you
awake. Dreams aren't
good for you.
I'll keep them away
and myself close."

He covered his face
with the
pillow again
and held his breath

She went on, "You know
what I dreamed last
time I was
asleep?
Of you, of course!
I dreamed that you were
so small and so
cute
and I could hold you
in my palm
and play with you so nicely
and squeeze you
all over
and, my ultimate fantasy, chew
on you!
Oh yes! I put you whole
in my mouth and
bit down on your chewy
cuteness.
Then I bit you in the middle
and tore your
torso off
and swallowed your bottom
half completely.
I came at that moment. Yes,
it was a very wet
dream.
I kept the top half of you
in my palms
and watched your beautiful
guts ooze out.
Ah, they were like swollen
spider legs. And I
made you walk
and crawl on them all
over my body.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap,
your hot gut-legs across
my sweaty skin went
up and down,
up and down.
Oh, and I swear the only
bad thing about
this dream was that it
ended too early. Just
when I was about to
sew your guts
on a spot
between my breasts.
But what am I saying? The right
time for that dream
to end would've
been NEVER!!!
Right, darling? Right?"

He tossed the pillow
away
and stood

Walked out of the
bedroom
and into the kitchen

"Darling!" she shouted
in his head. "What do
you think
of my dream?
Most wholesome
thing ever, right
darling?
Riiiiight?"

He opened a cupboard
and reached for
a little box of
sleeping pills

Opened it

"Darling?
What are you doing? What's
that?"

He poured a few pills
into his palm,
about six,
and swallowed them quickly
and placed his head
sideways under the
tap to suck at the
stream of water as he
turned it on

"What silly behavior,
darling," she said. "Those
things will
make you sleepy.
It... It wouldn't be
a problem if
you'd dream of me, but...
What if you don't?
Can you imagine? What if
you go to sleep
for hours and hours
and... Ah, I don't even
want to think about
it!"

He went back into
the bedroom

"Darling,
get those things out
of your lovely
stomach now! C'mon, let's
vomit together!"

But the only thing he
could do now
was start crying
and throw his numb body
forward
like jumping into a pool
so he could land with
the head into the
corner of
the nightstand

It was a fairly
loud bang
and he stayed down
lying on the floor, luckily
on a carpeted portion of it

He was on his side
so it was alright
even if he vomited in his
sleep

The sleep didn't
come yet
but something better
came.
A silence so sweet and
so mercifully tender
that his numb face
turned into a smile as
the eyes closed


It'll be alright

She will come back
by the time
he'd wake up
but she
wasn't always
so bad

Sometimes she
was
actually quite all right

Some time ago
when he worked up
the courage
to tell his
father about her,
the father said,
"Meh, that's nothing,
try living with
a real woman and then
see what it's
like to go mad for
real."

Of course
father was drunk more often
than not
so he didn't know
much about
women that were real
and women that were real
only to certain men. He
had his own
demons to live with

Everyone must
have those

else they're either
a boring saint who spends
a lifetime meditating
in caves
or not a complete person
to begin with

Yeah... demons
complete us
as humans

Why should one seek
to live without
them?