Pedals

Isabela Robu
Mama holds his hand tightly and takes the first step, hop, the boy jumps and they both get onto the sidewalk while the cyclist passes behind them. Go, his mother warns him, but the boy looks back at the puddle where there is a rain worm and refuses. What's wrong, the boy almost cries. The mother tries to leave, but the boy's palm detaches. It's dead, she says hesitantly. Save it, the boy asks her, and she pushes the rain worm near the sidewalk with a leaf, lets it go, and pushes it again, okay, it can manage on its own from here, let's go.
 
 Elena Fermuș
Grandma doesn't let her granddaughter go out with the tricycle, not even on the sidewalk. Sometimes a speeding car slips through there, like on that dark day. She was with her mother then, who had just bought it for her, and was teaching her how to pedal. Only a miracle pushed her away from death, at the last second. She didn't make it. Since then, the little girl fills the basket on her tricycle every day with flowers she picked herself. Flowers for angels; and she throws them toward the sky with the slingshot made by her grandfather. In return, she asks for dreams. Dreams with her mother.
 
 Bogdan Sebastian Burjan
The pedals creaked rhythmically under the pressure of her hurried steps. It wasn't a bicycle. It was an old piano. Forgotten in an attic where no one had been for a long time. In a dark corner, covered in dust, there was an old photo. Grandfather smiling. She pressed the pedal down for a long time. And the notes continued to connect and unravel. Deep and low tones, long, short, or high notes. In a silent score. A story long past and untold. She blinked. For a second. Music isn't about sounds. Maybe it's just a story. For those who can listen to it.

 
(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)