The Distance from Me to Me

Ioana Clara Enescu
Last night, in the café, out of the blue, I was struck by longing. I hadn't lived here for a long time and I really wanted to go home. It's time, I thought to myself, and I decided to go out. Just then a lady with white hair like a cloud came in. She looked at me for a moment, sat down in front of the open window, took out a book and began to read. Yellow seas, barbaric crying dinosaurs, and a Japanese fisherman gushed from her lively words. As I listened to her, Nora, the little girl with sparkly hair, smiled at me, took my hand and walked me home.
 
 Marina Borzescu
Retreating to the calm of the room, I ponder the words of the aikido master. Suddenly, a nagging buzz brings me back to reality, a fly. I give chase it away, it insists. Time to apply the lesson, I tell myself. I close my eyes, listen. Self-consciousness retreats from the body, empty. The only sense awake is the hearing that follows its chaotic flight. I feel it close, raise my hand, wait, then suddenly close it. I feel her struggle, walk to the window, release her. The next day the master congratulates me: you see, it's not hard, when you caught it, you were the fly, now you're my disciple.

Radu Gramatovici
You know, when you drive down the Victoriei Passage from Titulescu, that support pillar that is right in the direction of travel? You know the feeling? Well, the lanes turn slightly right to go around it, it's not like you're driving straight into it. He wasn't looking at me, he didn't even seem to be listening, but I knew he was bombing in thought. Yes, the passage, the pillar, and? What the fuck does he want now? Don't you get the impression that the second lane has been getting narrower and narrower for a while now, like there's nowhere to go around the pole? You're an asshole, what's gotten into you? Nothing, nothing.

(Translated by Miruna-Gabriela Flipache / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)