He's sitting on the chair in front of me and the sun is shining in his eyes, pouring a bit of honey in the bright green shade. He puts his hand over his eyes and looks at me, smiling, through his spread fingers. I blush. The tram brakes, and he gets off at the last moment, whispering over my shoulder, I'll be waiting for you tonight at 7, at. I try to get up, to run after him, but my knees are not listening to me. I scream desperately, at the top of my lungs. Meet you where? I wake up groggy, my throat dry, in a bed too big for just one.
Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
You will never understand how humiliation hurts. She dragged me after her. A man looked at me with dead-fish eyes, then announced: he's broken, ma'am. I didn't raise a whore, he shouted. It's your fault, I told him. You only cared about grades. Your straight \'A's girl. Awarded. Who never says no. When my period came for the first time, I was scared to death. Where were you then? She cried, she slammed doors. I didn't tell him I hate you. That I wished I had lost the paper when he sent me to you. Castanilor Street, B2, 3rd floor. The best maths teacher.
Bogdan Sebastian Burjan
1924. Winter. Everything was white. It was snowing with big snowflakes. They were waiting for their parents outside. They were making angels in the big snow. He was making big ears for them. And balls. She was laughing shyly. And he would hit her with a snowball in the head. Even her beanie would fall off. She was laughing again. And he hit her again. She was charmed. Nobody had done this for her before. You son of a bitch. Her father came angrily. He shoved his head in the snow and kicked him twice. She hastily wrote an address in the snow. It was storming outside.
(Translated by Alin-Marian Mărgescu / 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.