The mountains are special, people have learnt. So now people visit them accompanied with dynamite

They deny the true nature of their history and try to censor ours in the name of equality.

It is not pleasant to be torn between two worlds you love.

I know what it feels like.

I wore low-powered glasses before. I could see myself in the mirror, but not clearly.

Herring fish gather in the shallow stream behind the lake and through the trees.

The last move (the best move, the worst move, The Move) was almost four years ago

There is nothing profound about any of this. There is everything beautiful about all of this.

The silence can be eerie

Dark, damp and cold

Since Ukraine has been invaded, I feel that my inner world has been invaded as well. 

For more than a week I have not been able to hear the voices of my relatives.

Lviv meets me with more air raid alerts, more panic attacks. 

there hasn't been a moment of silence since we set off. behind me—a three-month-old baby.

You always liked to watch the trains as they passed by, one after another, right on schedule. You liked the whooshing sound of the breaks as the train slowed into the station, and the whirring of the engine as it started up again.

I found love in the plastic heart of a run-down souvenir shop. Sweat had dried in a sticky landscape across my back, and I was out of breath from the sheer force of the midday sun, and I was standing in between . . . 

Someone once asked me; "Bianca, why do you write?"

On hearing that, my lips arched with a flashed smile and I replied with complete honesty.

"Ever saw something so wrong but couldn't change it?

We walked along the small terrace of grass, the blinding heat of the sun forgotten . . .

She spoke with her hands, weaving stories out of air and breathing life into them . . .

The grass stings my thighs and whispers at me to move my legs so that it may look upon the stars 

I try to think of death as an ocean; uncharted and unknown, but vast.

These are the scents I will take with me when I leave this house.

My best friend and I always talk about how we're going to change the world. 

Water waits and wastes away in wilted states. It waxes and wanes in winter weather and slips away in the spring fever. 

Today, nature is fit in an open, square bus window with Mama obstructing the moving, alfresco greenery. 

Lisa hasn't changed at all from the way I remembered her from the local library. 

The story my grandfather told continues to shape me today. 

I long for the day when lockdown ends and I can safely visit Evie again.