The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood – Youth – Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

Beautiful, untouchable, lonely, and full of secret thoughts I would never know.

Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.

Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will open again.

It bothers me a lot that I don’t seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people’s reactions. It’s as if I’m only moved by things that come to me indirectly.