Imagine that you are a vase. One whose value has increased when its shards were glued back together with gold dust; you know the Japanese technique, so nothing's new. I see you're scattered all around and I gave you henbane so that I could stitch you back together. I am going to help you pull yourself together. The multiple fractures which I've caused you while you were sedated will mend. The bony callus that will form once the fractures will have healed is stronger than bone. You will be a living work of art. But life is also temporary. There are things worse than death. This is one of them.
Ana-Maria Dobre Nir
When he told her they were going on an hot air balloon ride, she didn't imagine what would happen. She thought he would propose to her. Then, a few meters above the ground, he started telling her that he had fallen in love with someone else, but that he couldn't leave her because he knew she would suffer. She couldn't believe her ears. Then she grabbed the picnic basket she had prepared and started hitting him, and after that the baguette. He was dodging it and fidgeting. Eventually she pushed him. And he fell. Snip, snap, snout, this tale's told out.
George Dometi
With the coldness of the curved quill, I am touching the lips heated by the blood gushing from the cut carotid artery of a merciful word: Love. It entered my mouth - tasteless and chewy, and as I was munching on it, it made me feel so nauseous I had to spit it out. Clumps of it sit clotted in the corners of my mouth, but I do not succumb to the desire to destroy it. I don't kill cruelly nor do I distort the bodies of my sacred crimes. Not at all. I melt them through a ritual of forgiveness in the inkwell that is my mind and I lay them on paper.
(Translated by Laura-Monica Doroiman / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.