Dear mother, I feel the fears growing inside me, like shadows. I've heard on the news about wars and attacks and I am afraid that one day they will get here. They talk at school about global warming and I am afraid that the forests will burn for good or that floods will take away our home. When I hear about pandemics, I am afraid of losing you. Fears gather in my soul, they grow along with me and I wonder how to make them smaller. I want to be brave, but how can I be when the world seems so frightening? Mom, teach me how to stay true to myself.
Dana Popescu
Hey, there are quite a few of us here, don't you think? Let those who have read at least one book in the past year leave the room. No one? Alright. Then let those who have said thank you and goodbye when they left the store step out. Still no one? Okay, how about those who accept their friends without judging them? Still no one? Okay. Let's try those who empathize with those in suffering. Well, then let those who don't believe they know everything, who don't have opinions about everything, at anytime, leave. Still no one?? You see, we're hopeless.
Daniela G. Pătrașcu
Jesus, what's going on here, she whispered, after we managed to squeeze past them, into my room and close the door. You don't want to know what I am going through, how much I beg her to stop bringing her friends over night after night, to stop smoking weed and listening to their hip hop music until dawn. She won't listen, no matter what. Every time I bring it up, she starts telling me it's fault, that it's because I left to work abroad right when she needed me the most and if I don't accept it, she'll hang herself just like her brother.
(Translated by Alina-Lorena Dulamă / 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.