I still live on the third planet from the Sun and keep our memories, stamp collections and odd gourd collections. Do you remember them? small and round, lacy around the edges. We were playing ET, we'd just seen the movie. While we were laughing, you'd get in the bike basket, and I'd cover you up and walk you around the yard. And you'd point your finger at my forehead and tell me you'd stay there, and then we'd hug and we'd both cry. The flying saucers have dried up, but my longing is always traveling through the stars to you.
(Translated by Florina Șamata / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 February 2023, the group has 10,500 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. 
