Got any smiles? Canci, today it's just tears, it's graveyard day, candles are lit, stories are told on the flagstones. Neah, I don't want tears. I've got some evening melancholy and some dusty hope left over from last month. Neah, hope I have plenty, when shall I pass for smiles?' Hmm, I'm going on holiday from tomorrow, but come by later, early in the morning, the granddaughters are coming over and they have a gleeful laugh. They will help me pack and we're going to the mountains to count Bucur's sheep. Then goodbye.
(Translated by Andreea-Daniela Vasilache / 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. 
