I Lost Your Address

Sanda Burță
My parents told me the truth only on my 18th birthday. But I had already known since the 2nd grade when the children were calling me Renata-the adopted one. I searched for you and found you. It's me, mother, I murmured and waited for your hug. Or the earth to swallow me. I had been dreaming of this hug for 10 years now. The unlived forgiveness burns the soul. Yesterday you looked at me coldly. Then you came without being called and now you did the same thing. I don't know why I'm still writing to you. You know what? Just rip the letter. Or use it to wipe your ass. Mothers ARE born, you know.

Julia Sandu
I decided on Mari Kondo to organise my digital anger. Deleted uatsap no, facebuc, idem insta. With a ruthless effectiveness, he wiped out the existence of the one with eyes like slag, with so-called shovels, which he names soles and the skin's taste of caramels. After the detoxification, the moths inside my stomach have protested viciously. I took drastic measures in order to calm down the chaos which was flowing inside of me and to get rid of this infestation. I swallowed some mothballs hoping that the secondary effects would lead me to his address.

Miruna Marin
I can't remember where you were living with your parents, I only remember the white roses fom the gate and you, as a child, calling from the street a lonely and sad girl with glasses, who came at grandparents, to see the wonder. A pitch-black dog which you had saved from the tractors' wheels in the field. I heard that at 19 years old they married you off to a drunkard who beat you up in such a way that one night he managed to kill you. Then I wasn't going to the countryside anymore and neither did I need to be saved from the loneliness by the gentle village girls.

(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)


Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In March 2024, the group has 12,800 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.