Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

The war lost any other significance. Winning meant winning her. Losing meant losing her.

I was beginning to find beauty in destruction and ugliness;

I was too young to tolerate boredom. I hated it as much as old people hate instability, yet I never considered getting out of it.

To a left-handed person it is unnatural to pull a pen along like a limp extra finger rather than push it actively as a natural extension of the hand.

Vienna only remained Vienna after the war the way a loved one retains a name after death.

it was worse than four elephants in a rowboat.

The flags were like children sticking their tongues out at us—annoying, but only to be expected.

“Time heals everything, even scars. They get stashed away in the pleats.”

must leave this old shell of mine behind. Rest your ear on it after I go and you’ll hear I always loved you.”

One’s beliefs through life resemble the rings of a tree, each year solidifying what we successively thought, doubted and believed.

Love is as free and liberating as the air, the wind

she saw a relationship between the trees and the sky, both vividly colored before dying, and the mysteries of life and death. God did not take life away; no, He simply reabsorbed His colors.