That sounds more like an analysis on the soul, Petre told me, sucking a cigarette. The conclusion, written on a strip of heart. My knees are bent, struggling, hollowing, falling. With kg it's simple, you put a padlock to your mouth, they go. To the soul in vain you put a padlock. And how to put a padlock on the soul, when in it lies so beautifully. It is not in vain that God has given us that gray matter, small but infinite. Let there be a balance between heaven and earth. It's Me, in turmoil. And I like it damn well that I Am.
(Translated by Mara-Sabina Rolea / 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 January 2022, the group has 7.830 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.