We both lie in the grass, our eyes locked to the sky. I hold her hand, tight. I tell her that if she wants to be my girlfriend, I'll take her far away, across the universe, put stars in her hair, carry her above the clouds in the big chariot adorned with stars, I'll string the planets in a trail of beads, I'll put Saturn's ring on her finger. I wake from my reverie with my father beside me pulling my hand. Child, run and milk the Galaxy, then come back down the Milky Way with your feet, the polenta's ready.
(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 June 2023, the group has 11,430 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.
