What I see through the telescope in the block of flats across the street

1^st floor hyacinths. Purple. Beside, a box of Belgian truffles. 2^nd floor tulips. Many. Yellow. Cheerful. Opened. 5^th floor ravishing freesias. 8^th floor crushingly red roses. 9^th floor eight carnations. Incense and a quiet wooden box. 7^th floor a waterless vase. 4^th floor a snowdrop. 1^st floor she washes the dishes, he fixes the bathroom battery. 2^nd floor she scrolls on her phone, he scrolls on his phone. 5^th floor the flowers she got at work. 8^th floor she\'s off to the gym. 9^th floor only tears. On the 7^th there\'s nothing. 4^th floor he and she make love witnessed by a snowdrop.

(Translated by Alexandra Lica / 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 March 2021, the group has 4.300 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.