Regrettably, our parting is not beautiful. It could have been. It is an unhappy and painful one. Despite the terrible proof of love we gave each other, your doubt and mistrust sublimated our love into an unbearable state. Yet, my journeys beyond distant borders have been easier now, with the knowledge that the crystal rose inside my mind's memory backpack keeps shining still in memory of our once lived, great love, but which, regrettably, stays hanging between your fantasies.
(Translated by Cristina Stan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 February 2022, the group has 7,950 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. 
