Picture of the Year

Julia Sandu
I took the fingers of my hand, created a rectangle in which I framed his face. Remember, I said to myself. His eyes black as blackberries, his skin is like a Cumulonimbus cloud, cotton candy, his curls curled around his neck like a Fibonacci spiral. I told him to be my summer, and now I take the words and drown them in a kettle, for the sea is too far away. He brought autumn to me while I was full of wild apples. Since then I plunge from heights with the speed and strength of a performance swimmer into the abyss to find his image every day.

Adriana Patroi Miu
They told me that I had to do the procedure: for the other three children at home, for my husband, so that I could continue working. The doctor looked at me irritated; his schedule was full. The air in the doctor's office was unbreathable. They're only two cells advanced, ma'am. Everything will be back to normal in half an hour. I took another look at the X-ray. Their hands hadn't fully formed, but they were struggling to hold each other. And then I felt like a mother. I banged his head against the monitor. I told him: forgive me, in half an hour everything will be back to normal.

Cristina Alistar-Gabouty
From the group of thirty students in black and white uniforms I see only him, in the middle, with the last button on his shirt unbuttoned and a nonchalant and decomplexed smile. He's more handsome than Ștefan Bănică Junior in High School Years[1]. The others are shrouded in fog. In a corner there's me, the smallest, the shabbiest, if we didn't have uniforms, I'd be the worst dressed. The 30-year reunion. He's back from the States, a doctor, fat, divorced. I work at Dior, still petite, divorced. He recognizes me. We smile.
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)


Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In August 2024, the group has 13,230 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, Monica Aldea, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.