Mom, why are you crying? That's how my eyes are, son. Mother, why are you struggling? This is how I live. Mom, why don't you let us help you? That's how I always helped myself. Mom, why don't you love yourself? That's how my mother loved me. Words are superfluous but you have to ask because otherwise you'll go crazy if you don't find out and when you know, it starts and you're filled with regret that you already know. Mom, if you die, what do we do? That's how I'm going to send you messages from heaven. Mother, why did you suffer so much? Such was the architecture of my destiny.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Mușetescu / 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. 
