When the longing becomes unbearable, a mother sends her child a photo. With a tiny cactus, in a flowerpot. From the far away home. Click. It's her silent way of shouting
I love you. That's how she burns down the kilometers separating them, that's how she can again feel her arms wrap around her baby, in the tenderest hug. Click. She doesn't know how to fit her heart into big gestures and words, the harsh life only gave her aches. Click. The cactus saves her. It blossomed recently into white flowers. Click, click, click. Child, I miss youuuu.
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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 July 2021, the group has 6.800 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. 
