To be alone is to eat a doughnut without fearing that sugar remains on your lips. Without having to share it with anyone. Without eating it by using only two fingers. Without fearing that you have dough between your teeth while smiling. Then having some left because it is too much. And then there needs to be someone else to give it to. To smile when they bite out of it. To kiss the sugar on their lips. To lick the fat off their fingers. To laugh with lust when they tell you with their mouth full the happenings of the day. My theory? Don't eat doughnuts by yourself.
(Translated by Diana Paşcanu / 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. 
