It is the last tea we're ever having together. She didn't move, looking at him without blinking. It's jasmine, your favourite. He studied her through the steam that was rising from the cups filled with the hot liquid. Ten years have passed since the accident, I can't keep doing this forever, and the children want me to go to Canada. I'll get to see our grandchildren. He wiped his eyes. Her muteness never prevented him from talking to her, but it saddened him. He finished his tea, reached over the table and turned the photograph in front of the other cup face down.
Andreea Sepi
What have I done to you? mother said, raising her voice, her eyes wide with shock. It's like you hate me. Why would you tell me all of this right now? Her wet eyelids turned red; her voice trembled. I keep silent. We've both grown old. All the words that I once wanted to say out loud, just to get their weight off my chest, were now sheer matricide. The past, in her experience, is made up of different fragments. Those in which she cooked for me, those in which, just like today, she stoically put a cup of hot lemon tea before me. I only say: Because you've never even asked me whether I wanted tea.
George Dometi
I'm reliving a day from my childhood with bitter ardour. I was at the train station and my father told me, his suitcase in hand: Baby, you take care of him, alright? And he left. He caressed my belly, he kissed me, and, in my disgust, I responded by biting his lip. Then I went to the old crone, who gave me a herbal brew to drink. At first I felt sick, then I threw up a rainbow out of embarrassment and hatred towards the seed, planted by the very same person who was supposed to raise me. But the bulb survived, growing into a pink Rafflesia arnoldii flower.
(Translated by Diana Gabriela Radu / 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.