Two lindens. Two old linden trees. My father planted them, with his big, knobby hands that didn't know how to stroke, only how to bruise. A pair of turtledoves nest in them. "Daddy's girls". He used to feed them on the kitchen windowsill. Mom, in the bedroom. Sometimes they'd throw their chicks out of the nest. Dad would take it, feed it the first day. Then Mom would take care of it until they left. Dad's linden trees bloom in front of the block. The turtledoves had a baby down again. This year no one will pick it up again. Dad's gone. And his lindens hurt me.
(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / 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 July 2022, the group has 8,750 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. 
