Dying Tales

Marilena Demian
Girls, stop with all these fairy tales you grew up with. Fairy tales with Ileana and Prince Charming, that he'll give you the diamond ring on the Pont des Arts or on the Rialto. Or how surprised you're going to be and oh how hard you're going to think before you say "yes." Or oh the rose petals in bed, the candle-lit dinners, the waves of champagne, and the flowers you'll get with or without a reason. G spot this, eternal faithfulness and happy ever after that. Cliches. Tall tales. Well, not the thing about that spot, I guess.

Cristina Alistar-Gabouty
Every day I went to see him at the surfing class. He looked like a god when he emerged from the waves. We spent the evenings walking along the beach and talking about everything under the sun until late into the night. Can you write a letter to Laura and tell her that I like her? he asked me one day while we were looking at the waves. I said yes, but I teared up. Later I came back to that same place and buried the letter in the sand. Summer and school break both ended, and all three of us met again 20 years later, each of us with our own children.
 
 Oana Jindiceanu
 He had an extraordinary talent for finding out details about people's lives from their social media accounts. If he got to meet them, nothing escaped the surgical scanner of his eyes. The graveyard keeper of feelings: unburying what others struggled for years to bury. He loved solving love stories. His eyes would twinkle when he brought them to light. He declared that he loathed them, for they were all the same, and that, in the end, they all broke up. His story got buried in time. He loved someone, but quietly.

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