I write for a Living

Radu Gramatovici
Look, it says engineer on here, said the first lady. Young too. I always wanted to fall in love with an engineer, they seemed so handsome and intelligent when I was young. I can't relate, said the other one. I would have liked to fall in love with a poet. Poets die at an even younger age because they live intensely and burn out faster. They're something else, these poets. Let's keep looking, she concluded and they continued down the alley. I go out for a bit to get some air. I find a rusty nail lying in the grass. I think for a moment, then I begin to scratch into the marble slab, adding: and poet.
 
 Marilena Demian
The Fates left nothing but a pen by my cradle. Oh, how my mother wept, how will my boy put food on the table without any gifts? I took the pen in my hand, pointed it at a piece of paper and it started writing stories. Stories about people with strange names, people I've never met. Hamlet. Caesar. Cleopatra. Othello. For a while now, I've been growing wearier with each life I bring into existence. King Lear knocked me down. Richard dealt the final blow. I have to go. Promise me you'll live on for me.

Elena Fermuș
Is money important? It is. To buy medication and to pay someone to look after you, because you can't manage by yourself. It's hard when one lung is missing and the other one's in tatters. The most minor act tires you out. And you get tired of going door to door, year after year, for some lady or some gentleman to give you a stack of papers, always the same one, so that you can make ends meet for another year. You get tired of seeing their sour faces, scrutinizing you like some kind of criminal. Wait, didn't your lung grow back? As if it's a nail or something. As if they don't know. Oh. This goddamn system.

(Translated by Bogdan Nicola / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)