Delicate

George Dometi
He was sickly when he was little. She was anxious. He wasn't allowed to eat anything other than carrot broth and grated biscuit until he was three. She grated all her hopes onto his plate, always lost in thoughts of the terror of losing him and the dread of her boozy husband's return, who would say: Take your little worm and leave if you don't like it. That little bundle of flesh was all she had. He grew up. She shrank. He always looked at her as though she were guilty. She loved him. We think of our mothers far too rarely.
 
 Iulia Biro
After New Year's, she felt as though she was starting to live again. She was even afraid to admit it, to acknowledge the small daily joys that were resurfacing-the thin thrill of happiness that passed through her every time she played music, the quiet comfort of calling Eva and after ten words, falling silent together. From the end of January, she would watch the gardens of the two houses between the apartment blocks. She saw the green peeking out from the snow or soil, growing-the fragile spear of hope for yet another year lived. Those snowdrops were, for her, the signal that she was emerging from the shadows.
 
 Magdalena Daminescu
Thin and lanky, head hunched between his shoulders, quiet and polite, mostly keeping to himself, he was always writing something in the notebook in front of him. He rarely raised his hand, usually when no one else volunteered, and every time he did, he astonished us, as well as the teachers. I stole his notebook in a moment of carelessness. It was filled with formulas and mathematical proofs. Feeling guilty, I apologized and returned the notebook. He gave me a shy smile, and we became friends. The following year, he didn't return to school. I visited him in the hospital, where he filled a notebook every single day.

(Translated by Teodora Anghelachi / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)