So often you wonder, what's the point? You're one of the many. The recurrent gangrene of the spirit. How did you end up lying in bed for the rest of your life? Blinded by your own desires. But what do you dream of? This feeling of alienation has nestled in my chest and strangles me, just like I gag when I dive under the waves and wish I'd never come out. There's no one to hear or see me anyway. They are too small to understand this, and she's far too absent. Fear gnaws at me. Olanzapine.
Ioana Clara Enescu
A line drawn with white chalk on the blue linoleum is the boundary that we can only cross when our teacher-mate beckons us behind the velvet curtain. We sit quietly, having forefingers of our right hands on our closed mouths. Our left hands stay behind our backs. Some girls heave at knots of their aprons, others playfully teeter, touching, as if by accident, their neighbours. I don't even blink. Then I see my mother and I run to her. I got it now, forever now on, that no line can hold my heart behind it.
Andra Toropoc
A line drawn with white chalk on the blue linoleum is the boundary that we can only cross when our teacher-mate beckons us behind the velvet curtain. We sit quietly, having forefingers of our right hands on our closed mouths. Our left hands stay behind our backs. Some girls heave at knots of their aprons, others playfully teeter, touching, as if by accident, their neighbours. I don't even blink. Then I see my mother and I run to her. I got it now, forever now on, that no line can hold my heart behind it.
(Translated by Florina Georgiana Țîncu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.