free verse lines in a notebook at two in the morning. For I can't stand being glued to the phone, wishfully thinking that he will call and apologize. I've never written poetry, but it seems that poetry is born out of pain. I write and write and I'm not able to stop, the lines flow naturally, vibrantly and bloodily. They trickle down my finger onto the paper, where the imprint of my silent pain lingers, the tears drip upon words- the phone is ringing, it's him. I won't pick up, I have one more poem to go.
Florina Hegedüs
I couldn't have imagined this. I miss Deir al-Madina school. But at least I have some smoke-black palimpsests here. Oh, and colored clay too. And the stem of a reed whose tip has been macerated. They've held up pretty well. Ra shines on here and everyone wonders why I gaze at them straight through the precious stone of my eye. Too bad they can't smell my skin which has been soaked in a mixture of wine and spices. I think that would make their head spin. Her in my transparent house, I have enough time to meditate. My work has not been in vain if generations after generations read it.
Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
The fog was so thick she could barely watch her steps. It had been snowing for days, and her boots sank into the ice mixed snow. Far away she could hear the wolves, but she felt no fear at all. She was so cold that she could not think of anything else. No sooner had the moon risen behind the trees, that she spotted a cabin in the distance. How fortunate, she told to herself. She picked up her pace, but the cabin was not as close as it had seemed. She kept walking. She struggled. Then fell. She wrote something in the snow and faded away.
(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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.