It's the first day without you. I can't get out of bed. It's noon. I'm still in bed. I don't know what to do with myself. I walk around the house like I'm crazy. It feels like a withdrawal that doesn't even hurt. It's night. Everything around me darkens. I fall asleep with my phone in my hands. The second day is similar. The third, the tenth, the same. On the fifteenth day, I saw a pigeon at the window. Then, I saw the trees on the hill, the sky, the world. On the 91st day, I was welcomed again into the virtual. I choose to stay in bed. Suspended by your kiss that felt so real.
(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. 
