If I fill the pockets of my dress with these stones, would they be enough to hold me down there, on the bottom of the ocean? Would the water accept me as I am, with all this will to live an honest life, or would it reject me, like all of those who had forgotten to follow up their promises with facts? Would these waves judge me just as harshly? My dear, you're being too dramatic, the husband would tell her. Mommy, where do writers go when they die? In the worlds their readers dream for them, she'd reply, if only she did have a child. Too many voices.
Laura Stanciu
Under an umbrella, on a sunbed, the woman was laying down, wrapped in a pink towel, showing only her neck, with another towel, thin and damp, just as pink, on her head, looking like a 100% cotton worm. A little, disoriented boy bended down to peek, lifting the towel on her face by one of its corners. Mama? As if at a sign, an old lady came out of the pupa, covered in muscles and fiber, and lunged to catch him. Don't move! Where are you parents? But Moses had already run away, buck-naked, parting the sea with his sand shovel.
Marina Cernat
Overwhelming how many grains of sand there are, isn't it? And still, you realise they are, indeed, finite. I can almost laugh, infinite finite grains of sand. And I, so big compared to them, I contain them all with my sight till far apart, I grab them all but they slip away, independent, as it's their nature. But, whenever they will, they cling to me and enter into my very soul. They like to come out during winter, crying like babies for their papa Sun. Good idea, the very depth of existence echoed as an answer back to me, let us name them all Human, and I shall call myself God.
(Translated by Adrian-Florin Duță / 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.