I start thinking about the portrait, the most beautiful one, that has ever been made for me by a
2-year-old girl. A circle and five lines, my version, faceless,
bandy-legged, and asexual. The paradisaical man. Without concerns. Without desires. With both legs and hands away from the body. In a position ready anytime to go playing. Besides the wonders that I have read around here, I consider this the most foolish
self-portrait and I call it like this because the girl was for sure an alter ego of mine from that age. It was exactly the same way I would have drawn myself. Five lines. A circle. A life. What else could I ask for?
(Translated by Beatrice-Ioana Huruială / 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. 
