Ruined

Adriana Patroi Miu
Here, there is silence: no more shouting from debts or poverty. Only animals visit us from time to time, and the rain, which sprawls along the gutter and slips down by a corner of the house. A black crow comes to the window each morning and taps its beak on the glass, there's a kind of wildness and courage flickering in its eyes. I open it. Come in, little one. Tomorrow, I'll arrange tomato seedlings with the care of a saint, then plant a birch tree. I'm piecing back together a soul from which only urban dust and a single line of poetry remain.
 
 Ioana Bostan
He shook the crumbs off his hat, crumbs now being pecked at by the scavenger pigeons. They were everywhere, and he had grown used to their company. He got bread, sometimes a kefir or a slice of sweet bread from an old lady giving alms. It wasn't a good spot, that corner of the boulevard, but he'd been warned he'd be done for if he took someone else's place. His old jacket bore the marks of a once well-fed life. And his shoes had once had an identity. He rummaged through the plastic bin and came across a frame with a text worn down by time: Blessed are the poor in.
 
 Ruxandra Donose
Hey, how are you, you look good, I say. He smiles moderately, a shadow of joy on his thinned face, I had stomach surgery, he says, it's not for everyone, but it worked for me. He had lost several dozen kilos. I'm happy for you, and I for you too, he says, we congratulate each other on how well we're doing. The next day I find out that on the same evening, dressed festively, he had hanged himself. With a suicide note and all. Loneliness, insecurity, the wound of non-acceptance of which he showed only the crust, the ruin had already begun in adolescence, from lack of love.

 
(Translated by Larisa Marta Mreană / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)