I tightened the gunny sack around my cane. I could have sworn I had left it on the chair by the door. But it wasn't there. Above the mirror, Amalia's photo smiled at me. She always said not to forget the bread. I had gone down the stairs, but they seemed steeper. On the way, I passed the bakery. Twice. When I got back home, Amalia was there. You forgot the bread, she said. I laughed. I had already eaten. I showed her the bag, full. She smiled. Or maybe I just imagined it. Her shadow danced on the wall, stretched by the evening's dim light.
Irina-Ana Drobot
I was learning traffic signs. I drove in my imagination since I hadn't yet gotten my license - or a car, for that matter. Instead, I walked the streets I planned to drive on later. I practiced yielding and identifying the right-of-way in intersections. Eventually, as a pedestrian, I needed a reference for all this practice. I played both the car and the pedestrian. I gave way to a sunbeam. It was too beautiful a day.
Yuka Brevi
My services, at a modest price - online or face-to-face, one-to-one or in mass-to help you handle (and endure) the infernal traffic, are available. I am a Stress-Free Driving Trainer, and I start with simple questions: How many mother-related curses can you recall? How about combinations with movement verbs? Construction or religious references - rubble, baptismal fonts, saint's relics? I use therapies with constellations and regressions into the ancestors' past - those patient, fearless souls who once yielded the right of way to buffalo herds on the prairie.
(Translated by Andreea-Nicoleta Ban / 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.