The needle pricked firmly into the wrinkled skin and settled quietly along the thin vein. The IV drip had began its work. One bag, two, three, four. The old man sat curled up in the metal bed. He was no longer in pain. It did hurt, a lot, one time, when Liliana passed away. Since then it didn't hurt, no matter what happened. Like that one time he couldn't remember his poem at the end of year celebration. In vain had the teacher caressed his head, shame was burning in his chest. Now all he could feel was the smell of freshly cut, mown grass.
Yuka Brevi
I never liked to complicate things. Not in my youth, nor now, in my old age. There's no disadvantages. Solo is best. You do what you want, when you want, how you want. I don't want a car, a country house, pets. I have a small studio apartment, on the ground floor. The supermarket's across the street, to the left the hospital and to the right the cemetery. I have my coffee with the gravedigger, a guy who doesn't talk much, doesn't make plans, doesn't see himself anywhere in five years, he knows the score. Everyday he buries coffins full of irreplaceable people.
Carmen-Ecaterina Ciobâcă
I have a thankless job. I sit all day long at the table and I toil with straining eyelashes. My work is a fragile dance. Or a tightrope walk. I if step carefully, looking ahead, I remain invisible. If I take a wrong step, I am pointed at, or worse, I'm put in the pillory. I turn black coffee into words. No, I'm not a writer, although some have told me I'm something along those lines. I'm nothing more than a solopreneur, a mere translator, endlessly oscillating between the source and target language. I don't have a \'home'. Traduttore, traditore.
(Translated by Bogdan Nicola / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.