Relaxation

Dan Banu
The ground had softened under the sun's rays, like ice cream spread over a cake which pulsed with hot chocolate lava. The blooming linden tree had added a fragrant note to the yearning for surrender, and birdsong floated among the poppies. The heat had annihilated any desire, and the thought of running through the flowers had melted away. She could no longer see, no longer hear, becoming one with the earth. Suddenly, the sun vanished and everything around turned to black. Then even blacker. The thrush had left the branch, snatched the beetle, and settled back again.

Aurelian Țolescu
I am not relaxed. Work is demanding, time is short, and the only joy, until the evening when I spend time with my child, is to stuff myself. Sweets. They calm and delight me. Different flavors, Nutella, wafers, cakes, creams-it's terrible, but they soothe me at the cost of an immense stress. With each passing day, I'm becoming large as the wardrobe in my grandmother's room. I can't turn to nutritionists because I can't stick to rules. But now I'm tough, lying on a hospital bed, waiting for them to cut my stomach. Now you'll see real relaxation.
 
 Mirela A. Nica
A neuron swayed to and fro, on a spider's web nice and slow. Actually, it was its own dendrite, but I didn't want it to know that. And because the dendrite didn't break, I called another neuron. Two neurons were swinging in a hammock. It was almost a synapse, and because it was hard for me to understand what the heck was going on in my head, I called another neuron. Three neurons were swinging and singing by the fence, by the road. Today you're here, tomorrow you're gone. A wave of dopamine rises with a scroll on Facebook. Carpe diem and a dark Silva beer = Detox.

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