Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.

We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.

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

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

Tania, last time in Morozovo, I let you go, but not this time. This time we live together or we die together.

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.

The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.