Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.

Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.

To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.

Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there. Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice.

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.

Tomorrow we will be nothing but earth and dust. Who will remember the love a soldier once knew?

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis.