She was carrying bags all day, so much so that her hands stretched long as the fasting days. She was on the road all day, passing through streets and district without letting go of what she'd accumulated over the years. No one knew she was homeless. Few people knew her. Her own grandson, the one that she raised alone, banished her. Begone, stank! Stupid hag! I'm not taking care of corpses. You've lived your life and ate your corn meal. She was happy about the package that the girl from the bakery left daily for her, outside the door. She was always waiting for closing time, hidden behind the acacia tree. And then she would start praying.
(Translated by Georgiana Morozii / 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. 
