Agnosia

Adriana Patroi Miu
Outside, the rain falls gently. Inside, the fire burns. It's night. The bed is made-but who could possibly sleep? Miți is completely gone; there's no sleep without Miți. Where did you lose her? Hunger. Thirst. Too warm. Now cold. Everything fades if you kick your legs enough. One lands badly. A split lip. Didn't feel the impact. The brown sheet with the zipper is in the wash. The green one-its zipper is too rough. Almost asleep, then suddenly remembers: there's meat stuck between the teeth. I look it up in the dictionary. I read the definition but don't understand it: ambrosia, hysteria, rosia.

Adina Colțea
Though she'd lived there a long time and knew every path as well as the lines of her own body, that day felt different. First, she spotted a cloud shaped like a heart and smiled-a good sign, she thought to herself. Then the trees around her bloomed with hearts, as if they'd always grown there and were perfectly content. The neighbors on the ground floor seemed to wave at her, their arms replaced by two balloons. She was genuinely surprised-she didn't remember them being like that. A fluffy cat, soft as a teddy bear, strolled by lazily, dragging behind it a torn calendar page marked in red: February 14th.
 
 Marian Bircea
Where am I going, breathless, with my trachea pressed against my spine and an emptiness in my stomach? I feel my bones aching, and everything together, just a shard of the flames of hell on my backbone. Is the floor moving, or are my eyes failing to find their place in their sockets? The wall shakes threateningly, my thoughts flying towards the acceleration of gravity. 10 meters per second squared. Only now do I painfully feel the impact of the fall from 4 meters. Two legs appear from behind, a phone draws near to my head. I've put you on TikTok. As if it was supposed to hold the ladder.

 
(Translated by Ioana Andreea Radu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)