I had a lump huge as a ball of thread in my neck, I was afraid that I wouldn't get to see you. It took me some time to untangle and unfold it over the thousands of kilometers that were breaking us apart, and I walked as on a wire. I lost my balance a couple of times, but here I am now to hold you in my arms. You're connected to all sorts of complex devices, unending small tubes which no one knows what kind of fluids are flowing through, but you have a big big smile on your face. I am happy that I could remake in time the umbilical cord.
(Translated by Irina Bîlcan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
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 Ficţiuni Reale. 
