Rerouting

Alex Caragian
The GPS was set to light-years away. The stellar storm in his soul had been raging for a couple of thousand years. From the control station, a waxen tear trickled down the face of the one who nodded in disbelief. The pilot was blind. He did not want to hear. His love turned his body into a ship of flesh. He rose. His eyes spun round and round, and so he moved in circles. He smelled olives from afar. I'll be back, he thought, when he saw the two mushrooms growing on either side of the planet of the lost black sheep.
 
 Cristian Nedelcu
Death wields a scythe, but not always decisively. No. Sometimes she likes to play a little, to have fun, to relax as well, because she must endureso much pressure, oh, poor thing. And then, she forgets everything and becomes a child again. Oh dear. Death, even as a child, when she plays, well, she plays, no joke. I crossed her path when she was having the giggles. I was staring Death in the face, so to speak, but she was not speaking, because she was departing, and not from me, but from herself. I kept quiet and crossed to the other sidewalk.

Gheorghiță Mircea
I know I disappointed my grandmother; I couldn't talk to my mother, she was gone, my poor grandmother was the only one who struggled to teach me the prayers, to tell me how God created the world and Adam and Eve. I was drawn to the story because once banished from paradise, the two realized they were naked and the first thing they did was to cover their shame. One day she took me to church. I felt it wasn't my path. I don't know why, I started whistling. Twice, and then I ran outside. Then I took Mimi to the river. Since then, I have been shameless and pantheistic. A heretic.

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