Here is Where I Hide Myself

Ana Ludușan
in the trench full of mud. Autumn has arrived, it's raining. I close my eyes and dream, it's sunny, I'm walking through the last world, it's peaceful, I look around, few people, no electricity, no iPhones, I see my wife, working around the house, we have two goats and a donkey, a child is splashing around in the woodshed, we're rolling around laughing, my wife spills the polenta on a wooden bottom and winks at me. I wake up to the sound of a bomb, two blocks and a church blow up. We are in the territory conquered by the Russians. I continue my dream.
 
 Laura Stanciu
You wake up as if nothing had happened. You go about your routine as a young woman. You jog every day, you go to college, you don't miss any exhibitions on Saturdays, you see friends often. Thursday is library day. You do your research for your thesis. Your boyfriend has already graduated. He sends you an average of 58 messages a day, you write him a little more, but you think about him less. He's afraid of losing you, but when you find out you're pregnant, you'll decide to stay with him and keep me.

Marian Bircea
The hedgehog cowers in fear, with sharp spines ready to prick the sky if need be. This is how we live, a ball of thorns amidst suspicious glances. One day I got to tidy up my attic, I was turning over beasts twisted like snakes with a pitchfork, some old, some rotten, some dirty, others trying to throw burning bites at me. How can you protect yourself from them if you don't face them? To throw them far away into the corrupt world of selfish people and hypocrites. The last one though, lay hidden under the others, at the bottom. Come on out, you are a good thought.

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