If You're Reading This, You Have Been Chosen

Raluca Maftei
The letter had arrived in the morning when he was away at university. He took it with trembling hands, and his eyes fell on the fateful words: You are summoned to present yourself for conscription on... In his soul and stomach, he felt the lead grow inside him, just as there came loud knocks at the door. He opened it, and in the house stomped distorted boots, carrying with them peasants reeking of vodka. Their bloodshot eyes studied his delicate physique, and malicious laughter burst from their mouths. Slowly, his youthful dreams began to fade away.
 
 Anca Sfâriac
No one escapes life. The therapist's words spun in her head like a flock of crows. The only certainty is death. And the chopped-off breasts, and the therapies. When you're healthy, you have 100 problems. When you're sick, you have just one. Your mother chose life for you, she chose to give birth to you. Damn therapist, once again he made a wreck of me. New email from the Oncology Institute. Congratulations. You have been selected among the first 50 participants in the new research program. How lucky I am to be alive. I'll call my mom.

Titela Durnea
At the age of 15, she didn't want to know about the baby. She rejected it without looking into its eyes or smelling its skin. She only caught a glimpse of the midwife's broad hands lifting the bundle wrapped in a white shawl. Then the door closed. Silence. She learned from her mother, long after the wound on her body had healed, that Isidor had sold him to some Frenchmen. God never gave her another child. She said it was punishment, He said it was a gift. Twenty-five years later, when the young Parisian knocked on her door, the stone in her chest collapsed. Only then did she see in the mirror what she had etched: mother.


(Translated by Claudia Garofina Greculeac / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, coordinator of the translations / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)