When I was a child, heaven was everywhere, in the chicken coop, in the attic of my grandparents' house, by the brook that ran through the village. When my grandmother bathed us with her rough hands in a basin in the sun with homemade soap and my hair would become greasy, it was still heaven. The polenta with which we ate eggs fried in lard with our cousins was heaven. I grew up and heaven moved into my child's smile. I grew old and I reached heaven, every tree, every drop of water in the sea, the smallest gesture of kindness is heaven. I haven't found the entrance.
Anca Chimoiu
Adonis woke up poised as usual. He looked at his face in the mirror, tweezed out the hairs between his eyebrows, the only ones that shadowed his perfection. He checked as he put on cream: biceps, triceps, abdominal muscles. They were in place. He put on jeans, his Nirvana T-shirt, picked up his guitar and started for the door. He tried to pull open the door, swing it open, nothing. An angelic voice released a knock knock knocking on heaven's door, but the gate didn't budge. Come on, Peter, I'm wetting myself, was heard before he got lost in the bushes.
Ionuț Morariu
Even after his death, my grandpa couldn't drive away her voice. Dream after dream, my grandmother nagged him to tell her how lambs graze with lions in the pastures of heaven. And because the affairs of the living were not yet indifferent to him, he appeared in front of her. But, not in a common way. In five hundred signs. He put in them a longing and a lark's song and a dragonfly's wing. But she forgot everything by morning. Save for a few angelic words. Which, translated into the human tongue, sounds something like this. And just so you know, I am in good health. That, thanks to Christ, I kiss you, ma'am, beautifully.
(Translated by Ana Maria Mitruș / 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.