Cristina Crucianu

Cristina Crucianu is a Romanian-Spanish author living in Spain. She holds an English Studies Degree from Universitat de Lleida (Spain) and a Master’s in Comparative Literature from Universitat de Barcelona. She speaks six languages: Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, English, French, and Italian. She is currently working as a high High-School Teacher, after leaving the soul-crunching corporate world due to burnout. She defines herself as a growth mindset person and considers herself an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion. She also loves reading, yoga, and sharpened pencils filling blank pages

Born to Leave

Part I
Born a Sinner
I woke up to my grandmother whispering to me: “It’s over. She’s passed.” Like a puppet on strings, I got up and forced myself to send the work assignment I had been working on before the frenzy of organizing a funeral began. A calm sky was lazily rising, as if nothing had happened. In the distance, the roosters were alerting the villagers that it was time to wake up. Their crowing, accompanied by the incessant barking of neighbors’ dogs, was the most precise alarm possible.
It wouldn’t take long until the first horse-drawn wagons passed by on their way to the fields. It was Sunday, but a few sinners would be seduced by the iridescent vineyards and the large corn or alfalfa fields.