I love her. I have no idea how I got stuck with this clear, honey-sweet pain. I watch her in college as she talks to them, the mortals who will make her suffer. She likes contemporary poetry, though she wears vintage clothes. At night I stare at the moon through the square window, haunted by her shy voice until the dawn's writhing longing arrives. I'm a university professor. I have principles and a girlfriend. I teach about the strength of materials. Yet I know nothing of my strength to resist her defiant lure. A flunker, that's me. Incorrigible, for the past 90 days.
(Translated by Liliana Popescu / 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. 
