Eminescu

If I had met you today in Crangasi, I would've asked you if you remember that we wanted to ditch chemistry in the 10th grade to go to Bellu and see Eminescu's grave. Our paths didn't cross. The last time I saw you, I was in the odd tramway. You were at the stop light, beside your junk of a VW. I recognized your forearm tattoo of Chaplin. You didn't recognize me. You didn't understand me. By your shining window, the ink hat that I had touched in a previous life suddenly appeared.

(Translated by Alma Teodora Miron / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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.