The village women's ball of yarn-pain cornered me again, at grandpa's wake. You'll be all alone, stop nit-picking, choose a lad and be done with it. You're getting ugly, like this you'll only get a bun in the oven in old age. They were stretching out the noodle sheets, hanging them to dry on the fence, and wouldn't stop yakking. The sun was blazing, it seemed to have burned their memories to a crisp. Bruise marks, head bowed before the stinging belt, the mockery endured whenever their polenta came out lumpy? They'd forgotten it all. I choose to be a spinster, I exploded.
Florentina Enache
You're all good; fawn you are, you've got brains, poverty pushes you from behind. If you tone your buttocks, watch make-up tutorials and insert a collagen thread in your lips, you'll be a bombshell. How's your English? Good, I passed my Cambridge exam. Come off it, nobody will ask you to tutor. Have your mama make a loan and take a trip to Dubai. In ten days you're all set; snatch up a cool boyfriend, and you'll go stressless for minimum ten years. You're so sure I'll find my soulmate there precisely? Are you an idiot? You don't find your mate, you make one. Just listen to her, soul.
Gheorghiță Mircea
The Creator picked up the clay wad, kneaded it in his hands forming little balls, it was soothing; nothing existed in the world, this disquiet seemed strange even to him. Spheres, the perfect shape, he told himself and coughed life into them. The spheres kept him company, but he quickly realized that, being just another form of his, they merely replied like an echo. Bored, he cut the spheres and named the halves man and woman. It amused him to see them crawl, calling blindly for each other. Would they ever meet again? Perfection was ruined.
(Translated by Ioana Ștefan / 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.