If You're Reading This, You Have Been Chosen

Sanda Burță
Any way you look at it, your liver is trashed, you could at least do one good deed in your life, sign this, the doctor told me and pushed a paper in front of me. I knew what he wanted, he had a friend, a big cop, who was about to die without a new heart. I grinned. Give me a cigarette, doc, I said. He gave me the whole pack, staring at me intently. I took a deep drag. I didn't sign then. Now let me tell you something about me, cop. This heart has gathered a lot of crap in it, generally hatred. That it's beating in your chest now is no scheme. I've devoured you.
 
 Iulia Stavre
When stories no longer fit in the storyteller's memory, he began to etch them on the cave walls. He continued them on tablets, parchments, papyri, and paper. Life needed stories. They knew immortality, passed through centuries. One day, all the stories in the world were swallowed by a huge memory. It created new stories on demand. It seemed that the world no longer needed storytellers. To save themselves, to be understood and loved, since then, storytellers began to write with their hearts.
 
 Dan Banu
Yes, I loved another man. And I do not regret. You were my calm sea carrying me in your arms, he was the wind lifting me to the sky and dropping me into chaos. You cannot imagine how much pain there is in this love, you who have not known how to love passionately, not even a woman. I have to choose between staying with him and living a tormented life thinking of you, or staying with you in my mind, hiding my body where any mistake is forgiven. Because you would not have forgiven me. If you are reading this, it means I have chosen. I love you.

 
(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)