In Search of Lost Time

Monica Bologa
One says that when you lose something you must follow the leading string back. I began with the freshest memory of you. I searched in my bed, under the too-thin blanket, through the kitchen in which I spent too many hours cooking cabbage rolls for you, in the company stores where I bought you countless fabrics, I searched through the thousands of late-night emails by the help of which I was telling you about me. After all this wandering through time, I got a little lost. Now I am looking around the house and I cannot find myself. I got lost.

Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
This is the place I like to be. Under the white spotlights, amongst my own kind, disguised, working. Hands are tireless, the brain pulsates. I open the box, the clock ticks. It is often as small as a tangerine. I stop it. The time freezes. Sometimes I fix it. Other times it is useless, I take it out. The blood void wants to absorb me. I replace the clock. The time starts again. Beyond the door- parents, children or siblings pray, tremble and cry. No, do not burden me, I am not a hero. It is a mortal that I am. I show others hours, days, years. By paying with my own time.
 
 Andrei Popilian
I get lost everyday through the pile of files. I wake up late in the morning, I make myself a cup of coffee and I methodically turn page after page. I could have done it differently here. I could have grabbed the car key, walked down the block stairs, slammed the door and hit the gas. I could not. Aftera half amount of coffee, I light a cigar for me, tired of so many steps all across the room. I had missed my opportunity. A house, a dog, that little one laughing in the garden. A hand is tapping me lightly on the shoulder. Hey. It was fine. Come on, go to the last page. You start wasting your time.

(Translated by Irina Vild / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)