Synkroniciti is excited to welcome Romanian American poet and writer Elena Lelia Radulescu of New Mexico with three fascinating poems exploring expectations in their most intimate and destabilizing forms. Each piece presents a woman standing at the edge of rupture—grief, illness, or sudden freedom—and choosing, with quiet ferocity, to keep living inside the unanswered questions.
“The Hole,” one of our Expectations poetry contest finalists, is a searing examination of a mother attempting to reclaim her life in the wake of her teenage son’s death by suicide. The imagery is devastating in its precision:
“Consider her grief,/ a match flame burning a hole/ through a sheet of blank paper,/ coiling, curling at the edges.”
The poem confronts a cultural silence: we rarely speak of what happens to parents after suicide, how society expects them—especially mothers—to recede, as if continued existence were somehow in poor taste. Elena refuses that erasure. She reveals the fortitude required to remain present in a world where language falters, people flinch, and grief becomes a taboo others cannot bear to witness. Her voice is elegant yet unflinching, balancing expression with restraint, holding the image of the burning hole against the fragile rituals of everyday life.
“Autumn Day” recounts a visit with a friend who has been given a difficult medical diagnosis and is giving away her belongings in preparation for what is coming. Elena’s touch is feather‑light, yet the emotional weight is unmistakable:
“She lifts her arms,/ as if her bird-like body would fly/ into the cold November wind/ undressing the trees.”
The poem’s power lies in its simplicity. Loss arrives not with spectacle but with the soft, devastating clarity of a season turning. Belongings become offerings and the healthy among us are unsure how to respond. Elena writes with a restraint that deepens the sorrow rather than dramatizing it.
“After the Break-up” brings us to a party, a woman, newly single, dresses for a masquerade, full of conflicting emotions of excitement and fear. She dances first with a dangerous type–a “Zorro-like” fellow, then finds herself with a different sort of man.
“You take lead, swirl to the center/ to the calm hurricane’s eye/ of that wild spinning around,/ less move, less harm.”
Elena creates a delicious atmosphere of mystery, excitement and disorientation. She addresses us as if we were the woman experiencing this new sense of freedom and danger and finding our feet and our way forward.
All three poems present a woman faced with something that can shatter her–the death of her son, the end of good health, the reality of being alone after being in a relationship. None of these women possess answers. Instead, they live toward them, inhabiting uncertainty with courage, curiosity, and a fierce commitment to presence. Elena’s voice, lyrical, restrained, and deeply human, illuminates the fragile spaces where expectation meets endurance.
Read Elena’s powerful poetry in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Elena Lelia Radulescu is a Romanian-American writer. Her work has appeared in Visions International, Square Lake Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Karamu, CALYX, Trajectory Journal, The Cape Rock Review, Magnolia Journal, Third Wednesday Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Gastronomica Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Blue Earth Review, Evening Street Journal, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and other literary publications. She is a retired teacher and lives in New Mexico.