We Who Stand on the Front Line

Răzvan Drăgoi
It was my first time. My nostrils felt the tickling of the powder. Is that it? How absurd. Is this what I paid so much for? What if I get addicted? I don't want to. Damn it, that's why I got it. How long does it take for this damned line to kick in? My first line. They gave me powdered sugar. Baking soda.  I should feel something. To feel strong. Wait. This isn't my bag. Where did I put it? And I heard, out of nowhere, the trumpet announcing the Apocalypse. The final sound. The destroyer of worlds. To put it less poetically, the alarm clock.  
 
 Florina Hegedüs
The city had declared war on the supreme. Andrieș was singing forbidden songs. A few of us, from the infantry, took a step forward. We knew already that life is a struggle, not creative writing on the walls. We knew whose side we were on. We had the mind; they had the body. During the confrontation they berated our ideology with beatings, and they stopped our odes dedicated to food, warmth, hot and cold water. The next two years we were busy recruiting. For the final assault. We were all on the front line. But I'm not sure we won.
 
 Ruxandra Donose
In first grade, the choir teacher assigned me to second voice. I tried not to be sad, although I couldn't understand why I wasn't good enough to sing first. Then my mother, smart as she was, told me that it was not due to a lack of talent, but rather because of my musicality and intelligence, that second voice is harder, because the song is easy to sing, but it is much harder to maintain the harmony. Prophetic. I sang second voice my whole life, even as a primadonna, because harmony always came first.

 
(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)