I have worked for 11 years out of the 35 that I got on my work card. Plus a year on the road. I slept for 26. Spent 7 years trying to fall asleep. 11 watching TV. 5 on the internet. 5 years of cleaning and cooking. Almost a year of my life waiting. 6 months waiting in line, 27 days in train or bus stations and 5 months on the phone. 3 months getting dressed. 5 months complaining about different things. I have watched the sunrise for 2 months. I held my lovers in my arms for less than a month. And for only 3 months did I laugh. For there was nothing left to laugh about.
Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
I live in a carousel. I am often dizzy and feeling like I'm about to throw up. The reality is only an endless sequence of images. I am afraid that I'll pass out. Sometimes I wish I did, so that I could get some rest. To breathe. To get back on my feet. To turn towards. To be honest, even I don't know towards what. Maybe towards another now. One in which I am not afraid to live in such a carousel. Which keeps moving and moving. Moment by moment. In which I could live without having to regulate my breathing. Since I am another person. Another me.
Ioana Clara Enescu
It started raining at sea. Long, silvery wires are plummeting from the skies, hooking onto the metallic spine of the sea. It's not long until the storm will reach the shore. You cannot stop it. For that matter, you don't even wish to. You learned how to wait for it to pass. You close the blue shutters, make yourself comfortable on the armchair, open the book on the bookmark you'd left the other day and plunge in fiction as in a calm sea, from the depths of which you pull out an oyster, put it next to your ear and you listen, in awe, as the past grows within it like a pearl.
(Translated by Adelina-Maria Mănăilescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.