We Who Stand on the Front Line

Iulia Stavre
The light November rain makes us freeze in our clothes. Ioan gets a tapestry icon sewn by his grandmother out of his breast pocket. He says a prayer. Paul glances pensively at his fiance's picture. He hopes she will be back in time for the wedding. I think of my mother. She is home alone, sad and ill. Today is her birthday. My father used to order lilac bouquets for her from the flower shops in Paris. Among raindrops, the drone hovers strangely over our memories. We are white crosses on green grass, closed in by lilac bushes. 
 
 Magdalena Daminescu
Those of us that are left and that are still trying to pretend that there is no way forward without us, should become invisible. We stubbornly insist on living, like ghosts from another time, just to remind others that without us they would not be what they are. We are becoming more and more useless, pension and medicine eaters, which they have to pay for, and we even have expectations and demands for love. Still, as long as we are still here, they are second in line, they have time to pretend that they are important. 
 
 Florentina Enache
The rule was clear: prize winners in the front, those who flunked in the back. The short ones or the ones already wearing glasses occupy the first benches, the tall ones the others. The demands were the same for all: to say what they should, to do what they were told and to give it their all always and without comment. When our history teacher explained to us the arrangements of the troops on the battlefield and we understood what it was and where the food for powder lay, we looked at each other more closely. I never knew whether I was short or a prize winner. 

 
(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)