While I Was Washing the Dishes

I am one of the lucky men who have a window above their sink. When I wash the dishes, I let my eyes drift among the mute caterpillars in the treetop opposite, among the iron beds crammed with patients with hemiplegia from the hospital behind the tree, and further - among the waves, towards Washington DC and the Capitol, where there's - yikes! - a horrible sight. And further on, my eyes caress the Hawaiian warm rocks until they cling to the back head of a man who washes the dishes in a kitchen with the window above the sink.

(Translated by Alexandr Cotar  / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Professor Nadina Vişan)

Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In January 2021, the group has 3.000 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.