Karina Szczurek

I see the process of reaching out, sharing yourself, communicating, establishing contact between two people as similar to, if not the same as, the interaction between two people entering a relationship in literature _ that is, as reader and writer. Both seem to have the same astounding possibilities and the same terrible pitfalls. But if you battle through and souls touch, magic happens. Love. We feel more human, more alive, more understood, naked and yet protected from the cold of isolation and indifference. Our loneliness is, temporarily, held at bay.

Verlange. The process feels like crossing a border on a one-way ticket, from a state of innocence, to one of irreconcilable knowledge. You are in a new country. But no one wants to live here. The visas are assigned by some obscure system nobody can comprehend.

The correspondence testifies to the frailty of human longings, to the process of how something precious can turn fatal, a reality become illusion. We are reminded that love should be cherished when it comes your way, because no matter in what form it arrives, carrying no matter what baggage in its fragile beautiful hands, you should welcome it and protect it from the harshness of this world.

This is what I always said to André: you never know. You never know what the future may bring. I just knew that whatever time we had together, whether one year or thirty-four, I wanted it. I wanted him. Regardless of the consequences. When a love like that comes your way, you grab, hold, cherish it _ you live it. You don__ allow it to pass by. It is rare and precious. If you are lucky, you__l have it once in a lifetime. Will I be allowed to live it twice? I doubt it, even if I wish it were possible. Periodically, I sit quietly and stare into space and understand that I am only forty, and it is behind me.