We’ll meet again in Lvov, my love and I…” Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young.

Open your eyes, soldier,” Tatiana said fondly, caressing his face.“Are you hungry?” “I was hungry,” Alexander said. “But you fed me.” His body was shaking underneath his sheet.

Tania, there is so much still ahead of you. Be patient with life

I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.

We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.

Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.

I know that sometimes the things we carry become too much for us. We are burned down, but somehow we have to pick ourselves up and keep going