I like our ritual. Every Sunday we go to the shop near the cemetery, mom buys two memory lights and that kind mister gives me a candy. He makes me smile. Mom always holds my hand. To say thank you. In November the cemetery is more alive than ever. The wind which wonders among through the crosses makes the walnut leaves dance. You can see death in colors, that's what mom says. I count ten of them. So she can dye her hair. Someone lights a candle at Creangă's grave. The giant girl near Rosetti's tomb seems more under the weather today.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She was staring out the window at the fall. She hated it. She was born with the must. Also then, she had been sold by her relatives, when she was sixteen, to a rich and old guy. When she was twenty, he no longer wanted her, he had aged. Take your brat too, he had told her, I don't need him. She lived on the streets, finished school, found a house when the little one got sick. Still on autumn. She was watching his small body crushed by convulsions, which left him like a rag doll. She increased the dose of medication. She opened the hospice's window, inhaled the scent of grass and fruits and began to fly.
Horațiu Dudău
I have been counting the time in falls. Since I had left. This is the twenty fifth. Here, half a year is mold. That is why I love her sadly. We don't laugh out loud. We smile between kisses. But I would love her in front of a fireplace with real fire. With flames. With the smell of smoke. To throw the after cigarette into that ember of hell. To stay naked, over November. I am laughing. Insanely. House wine. Grapes picked by ourselves. Somewhere a swoosh sound can be heard. A neighbour cradles her dead born child. This fall is outside the uterus.
(Translated by Irina Vild / 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.