Two threads, two straws, let's stomp Ciuleandra now / Două fire, două paie, ia Ciuleandra la bătaie. Two lives before and two lives after you he said in a whispered voice looking at the little one. The first life would have been too early, the second would not have wanted to come and the other two would have been too long. For a moment he saw in the child's eyes other multiplied eyes, he saw the other lost lives too. He hugged and caressed the baby for a long time so that it would be enough for him and for the other lost lives. He was too young to understand the swirl of her life, and it was a good thing that he didn't know it.
(Translated by Otilia Mocanu / 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 June 2021, the group has 6.650 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale.
