As I write this, I'm holding a rolling pin. I want to beat the words. I'm the best poet when I write prose, that's why poetry bores me to death. I don't swallow reminders about what's trendy in writing because I don't conform to rules, not out of arrogance or self-importance, but out of reading. If you had read, you would have remained a writer. Don't sprinkle salt and pepper on the wound of metaphor, it suffers enough from linearity and conventionalism. You ran me over with your car. I came back, but I've got something stuck in my craw. I took a dump on your bald head.
Titela Durnea
The smell of mold mixed with the stench of stale sweat, the ragged gasps, all fade into the tear clinging to my lashes. My mouth is silent, even though my body screams inside, hollowed out. I know, Mother, I know I've lost the right to complain. It was my choice. To believe him, to follow him. I open my eyes and see myself in the tear. I'm in a green meadow, the soft grass caressing me. I take flight and, with just two beats of my wings, reach her window. She's praying for me to be well before an icon. I'm well, Mother.
Răzvan Drăgoi
The pack of thoughts lunges at the throat of my emotions. It wants to stop me from feeling. But if I don't feel, how could I exist? I'm trapped in the labyrinth of Daedalus and Icarus. There's no chance of making it through on foot. The pack guards anything that resembles an exit. I'll have to invent wings out of nothing. The curse of perfection curses me from the depths, any slightest mistake would cancel the possibility of flight, but not its necessity. To keep existing, I must learn to fly. Or mayb let myself fall into another sky.
(Translated by Iulia-Mihaela Țugulea / 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.