Ok, she thinks. I'll wipe off my dad's alcohol, so gone are the doubts, shame, arguments, constant criticism, disinterest, even his untimely death, mom's neurosis. I'll erase both parents' smoking, so the money stays and gone are the smoke and the smell lingering around the house, arguments over cigarettes, arguments when they couldn't smoke, watering eyes whenever we sat together, coughing, allergies, asthma, disease and mom's dying before retirement. I'll add in love, respect, interest, care, smiles, safety, trust in others. Oh, what could've been.
(temă în parteneriat cu
Ideo Ideis, 2022)
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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 August 2022, the group has 9,000 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. 
