I follow in your footsteps like a hungry jaguar chasing a buffalo through a swamp. No matter how much the mud in which you sink hides your tracks, I smell you on the thin branch that touched your spine for a moment, shining in the sunset light. You cannot be far away. It hasn't been so long since we parted. The air still vibrates to the rhythm of your breath. Sometimes I see you floating among the stars and fish. At other times, I hear you laughing in the green grass. Night has fallen again. Say 'let there be' again. And there will be.
(Translated by Lenuța Bejenaru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 January 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
