September. Monday. Autumn is showing itself, in pastels, at the window. Only my eyes are awake, my brain is patiently waiting for its stimulus. The kettle is bubbling hastily on the stove. I bump into the leg of the table moving the wheelchair awkwardly. I don't hate it anymore. I gave in to his persistence of becoming friends. Mara left with the first trolley. She has been working double ever since summer. She always smiles at me, but I know what is beyond. I locate the scent of lavender that still hangs in the air. My eyes stop on the fridge. A heart holds the earth in its arms. Longing.
(Translated by Mălina Ioana Butaru / 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. 
