You made me forget myself and be someone other than who I am. It was me. Me, the one there is today. I stopped looking at myself with big, confident eyes. I was harsh to myself. Why did I punish myself for who I was? I didn't love myself anymore. I let the night embrace me and lock my light up. But the dark spot awakened my sense and forced me to paint my rainbows and sunrise in blood. I can't lie to myself anymore. The eyes in the mirror watch me with gentleness and kindness. No matter what I do, I can't be anything other than a sparkle.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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 April 2022, the group has 8,175 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. 
