Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces.

As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.

Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.

Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them — so deep was the pain in her heart.

Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her heart. She could not forget that this was the last night she would ever see the one for whom she had left her home and family, had given up her beautiful voice, and had day by day endured unending torment, of which he knew nothing at all. An eternal night awaited her.

I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.

I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

from “She

Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart.

I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

My heart, still full of her,
traveled over her face, and found her there no more...
I had thought to myself that a woman unknown
had adopted by chance that voice and those eyes
and I let the chilly statue pass
looking athe skies

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

Because we shared the loneliness that was one shape. Because I knew that in her old age she shared that same boat, where I had labored. She crested and sank in dark waves. Those waves were taking her onward, through night, through day, the water beating and slashing across her unknown path. She struggled to continue. She was traveling hard, and death was her light.