Leona had written a poem about a glass left on the table after the other person moves out. It was not particularly long. There was no betrayal, no culprit, and no statement that tomorrow would be better. At the end, the woman washed the glass and returned it to the cupboard. Leona's friend Dunja said she especially liked that ending. She sent it to an open call for a literary evening at a small cultural venue.
The organiser accepted the poem and asked Leona to arrive early. When she arrived, tables were already decorated with orange ribbons, and the wall announced that they were celebrating new beginnings together. Leona had never seen that slogan before. The organiser now proposed a small alteration: after the cupboard, she should add something about an open window, new love, or at least a smile. The evening, she explained, should lift people's spirits.
Leona said the woman had not opened a window yet. The organiser laughed as though the writer had taken her own invention too seriously. She gave her a pencil and told her to think while the others read. Leona sat beside Dunja. A few months earlier she had left a real marriage, but the poem was not a report. She did not want to prove to the audience or organiser how personally sad she was before being allowed a sad ending.
When called, she read the poem as written. The organiser did not immediately let her step down. Into the microphone, she asked where hope was in all of this. Leona looked at her paper, then the water glasses on the tables. She said she did not know where hope was that evening. She had come to read a poem, not brought it for repair. Someone in the room sighed with laughter, someone else with discomfort.
The next writer closed his notebook and said his story did not have a particularly cheerful ending either. The organiser replied that nobody was censoring anyone. From the front row Dunja raised the pencil Leona had left on her chair. She did not have to say whose it was. The evening continued, but the slogan on the wall began looking like someone else's clothing pulled over different people.
Leona did not win the argument. Afterwards the organiser told her she had been rude. At home she read the poem again and changed one word in the middle because it genuinely bothered her. The ending remained. Dunja came for coffee the next day and took another glass from the cupboard herself. They drank water, talked about something entirely different, and kept the window closed because it was windy outside.