Make Haste Slowly

Dana Popescu
If only someone had hit the brakes when I was in such a rush to do everything. When I couldn't wait for summer to come, then to finish high school. For my mom to finally let me go to the disco, to go to the seaside without my parents. To finish university, to raise my child, for him to finish high school, too. For time to pass, time that would bandage the wound left by his girlfriend's death, for him to graduate. And now I see him rushing, just like I did. I open my mouth to tell him to stop, to take a moment and see the beauty around him, and I remember how annoyed I used to get when my mother said the same thing. So I stay silent.
 
 Viorel Spinu
Chaos is destructive. She knew that well. So she sliced her life into tiny pieces. Like a warm loaf of bread, carefully sliced. In the morning she brushed her hair slowly. Sipped her coffee slowly. Walked to work and counted her steps. Two hundred thirty-eight to the intersection. Four hundred seventy-six to the office. She cut the tags off her clothes with a little pair of scissors. Her slices of life were thin and neat. She organized her drawers. Sat down on the floor, hands resting in her lap, and for the first time felt that everything was in its place. Everything but her.
 
 Dan Banu
He cracked his eyes open and, seeing the trees in bloom, smiled wide. Then he stretched out and curled up back into the sheets, buzzing content like a bee in a cup of nectar. He saw his sisters out on the porch, wrapped tenderly in the velvety caresses and passionate kisses of the Sun. The God could wait, spring was just beginning. But little by little, the Sun's kisses were replaced by those of the Frost monster. At dawn, Sakura's sisters lay dead on the branch, dressed in their white summer dresses.

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