She comes when I'm on the balcony. I'm chopping onions in the fresh air, hoping it will sting my eyes less. I found you, she says. When she's happy, her voice takes on high notes that I feel are sharp and scratchy. I feel like hitting her with the chopping board when I hear her. I hit her anyways, with the chopping board when, after whispering something I don't know what just to blow warm air on my neck, she hugs me accidentally right across my breasts, then she remains pressed against my back. I've told her ten thousand times not to touch me when it's so hot outside.
Andra Toropoc
They met at the Odeon theatre on a street tango night that changed their lives. They had formed an ad-hoc couple, their spouses did not dance, and the sensual intertwining of steps and bodies electrified them. They remained captivated by the magic of that night and felt that something wonderful, repressed by both until then, could be possible. Free love gave them wings of courage, they divorced and moved in together. Obviously, the world gossiped about them so much that they decided to leave far away. Perhaps they ended up in Buenos Aires and are living to the milonga rhythm.
Ioana Clara Enescu
The crowd in the bazaar streets was a river spreading its arms into a noisy delta. I drifted aimlessly for a while and then I was thrown onto a street with stalls behind which tired vendors were dozing. Out of nowhere, it seemed that the voice of a bird was calling me. I found it in a cage. When I got close to it, it fell silent and tucked its small head under a wing. The quiet awakened the vendor, who lured me into buying a silver mirror. From its murky water, an unknown woman began to look back at me from that moment on.
(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / 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.