This is the heart in which butterflies run gently and caress each other. In two beats it will perform a fatal leap and then it will go behind the scenes. No more loving butterflies, no more fighting for happiness. I'm tired. Now the angel's wings are coming to take the heart to bed. The little girl strokes her mother's face, wiping small tears from her cheeks. Okay, angel, put mommy to bed. Wrap her heart well, don't let it get cold. Look, I'm blowing to keep her warm. She fell asleep while mommy became a dream for a lifetime. Mommy's lips fluttered on her cheek.
(Translated by Mălina Ioana Butaru / 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 September 2021, the group has 7.150 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 Ficțiuni Reale.