Cabbage Rolls

Corina Nina
Once there was a red pot with fifty-four white dots that everyone in the house called the cabbage rolls pot. It was only taken out on holidays and wasn't used, like other pots, for soups or stews. It was the star of the kitchen. Until one day when it wasn't taken out on Christmas. It could hear the familiar bustle outside the cupboard, it could smell the cabbage rolls too, but it wasn't it on the stove. Steaming with curiosity, it used the lid to open the cupboard door. Above the lazy flames, a pressure cooker gleamed gray.

Andreea Andrei
Come on in. Leave your shoes on. I'll clean up tomorrow, no worries. Today we feast. Have a seat. We were just serving the cabbage rolls. Let me fix youa plate, you look hungry. What's wrong, you've turned green. Oh, no, you're sick. If you don't eat when you need to. That's why you're so skinny. C'mon, have a bite, it'll pass. What, you don't like cabbage rolls. I never met anyone who said no to cabbage rolls. Are you sure you're ok? Yes, I am. I haven't eaten cabbage rolls since my mom passed away. They remind me of alms.
 
 Monica Ciurea
Silence had fallen over the cabbage rolls pot. Heavy. Overwhelming. There were only two left. They lay wrapped up, feeling hopeless. They must have been forgotten. What a fate. Nobody wanted them anymore. They didn't even know what to hope for. Perhaps to be digested by someone, to give their short and sour lives some meaning. Or perhaps it was better to wither away in that existential abyss at the bottom of the pot. One of them looked fondly at the cabbage of the other one. It kinda got the hots for it. They got to know each other's leaves better. Once again, they were the first cabbage rolls in the world.

(Translated by Alin Sescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)