You tried to deny my existence in my most difficult moments, but I stood still here, understanding and loving you with every flutter of wings. You understood that later and you came back with a broken heart and a smile. I hugged you and shook you from all your dark thoughts. How could I not do that? Life has taken us on different and tangled paths. It made us taste its bitter and salty until we wanted the sweet. And we became what we once were. Come on, smile. Everything will be fine.
(Translated by Anca Cristina Ilie / 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 March 2022, the group has 8,050 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. 
