The water in the glass is alive. A drop managed to run away and is spilling out, stretching like a woman blossoming in an orgasm. Harmony is carefully controlled by sunlight and the ivy, master of window bars, claps with quiet rustles. The window calls out for air. It has sharp gestures but I like it anyway. I glance around the tidiness out there, then I step back to tidy up in here, but life warns me that I'm down one spring. It's summer, it's hot, I'm wearing an oxygen mask, but it's fine - good thing the water in my glass is still alive.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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. 
