Relaxation

Cecilia Fofiu
I'm telling Lia about the immense amount of stress I've been experiencing ever since Ada has been sidling up to the boss to nick the job position from under my nose, and she suggests a shamanic sauna session, just between us girls. I dress appropriately, with a long skirt, my hair undone, my feet bare, and I sit down in the circle formed around the shaman, an ex-accountant at the furniture factory. We connect to the spiritual realm through salvia fumes and drumbeats, then we are asked to relate childhood trauma. My turn comes, and I dazedly say that I have none. There's your issue, the shaman concludes, you're too relaxed.
 
 Șerban Răzvan
The fire is burning. It coils like a snake towards the walls and then engulfs the cradle in which the little girl is sleeping. The floor is crackling. Her face glistens as it would during a summer sunset. She's dreaming. She's smiling. The white paint is scorched in drops by the black fire. The wood crackles like some splashes of lava. The little girl sleeps more deeply than ever. The flames rush onto the white bed sheet. Soon, they will reach her leg. She wakes up. She erupts in a pained cry. In an ice globe, her parents watch football and Coldplay without a care.
 
 Mihai Priboianu
The cold stain hanging from the cloud was bringing the same October that had been stuck on his retina. Creaking familiarly, the bookstore's door presented the same wallpaper, the yellow of which every page from the new books on the shelves yearned for. The stillness of unparsed pages coated his overcoat in tranquillity. The greenish tea contrasted with the mustard-coloured corduroy hat. He took a book with a black cover and no title in his rain-drenched hands. He read out loud. The bookseller wiped the cold stain from the cloud with his green sleeve and turned its tranquillity into November.

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