Since my dad died I've learned what it's like to let your soul cry. You mind your own bussiness, then, out of nowhere, your soul begins to mourn. I sit on a bench and listen to him helplessly. He is weeping because he is afraid of disturbing me or scaring me. Most of the time, I try to comfort him, but how can man comfort his soul? Today I gave him a jasmine flower to smell and stroked my hand. Don't cry, poor soul, for six weeks, an angel lives through me. He smiled too, me and dad.
(Translated by Georgiana Carmen Rădulescu / 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 September 2022, the group has 9,250 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. 
