Fear and hope. You are greeted by blossomed trees, by the sun touching your cheeks as if spring came. I can't even remember the number of this spring without you. I lost the count once I gave up my habit to write to you on your birthday. I still cannot, it is too painful. And we here are growing old extremely ugly, everything now has no meaning since you are not here. I remember that photo where a smiling boy was holding a dog in his arms. I took that photo, do you recall? He's at my mum now. And this is how I heal, knowing that you are in the same place as me like now.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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 May 2022, the group has 8,350 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. 
