They told me to take root in the corner of the living room. As I stood with my hands in air, I imagined roots growing from my head, from my shoulders, like those of a baobab. And the scratched knees turned to two suction cups. I stood alone between the sprayed walls, through the meteor shower, stuck to the shiny floor. I might had stood like that for a life, a century, bogged down and resentful. Forgotten. I'm bound to then by the light under the doorstep like an umbilical cord. I wait for the lights to go out, so I can move. So I can uproot myself and grow into someone else.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Denisa Neagu / 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 November 2021, the group has 7.500 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. 
