Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn't it?

It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher. A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me. He never loved me. It was all a lie. "The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

Requiem has been controversial because people dont feel I gave it closure.

Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.

Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.

The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain. And then, in smaller letters: Forgive me.