A Quiet Draft

1. Love is a terrible injustice; it will even plead for the murderer.

2. Night deepens, night passes. But my sleep does not come, my dawn does not arrive.

3. Learn to be well. Don't go peddling such sorrow in the marketplace. You cannot be well that way.

4. Even the person worn down by the drudgery of living fears death.

5. Where I was not called in the light of day, I will not go even if summoned on a moonlit night—not even if I go blind.

6. The most precious thing you have given me is a wound. I did not know that anyone could break me so completely.

7. The pond's edge is no longer alive as it once was. There are no more stories in anyone's heart now, no mysteries, no simplicity. Only the scent of new cosmetics lingers.

8. We all go on speaking our own way. When we fall silent, we are only thinking of what to say next. We no longer listen to others.

9. I was better off when I didn't know how to count. Once you learn to count money, people forget how to live well, forget how to be still.

10. People have thought all manner of things about me. That I am this, that I am that. I have thought only one thing about them—that they are surely better than me in every way. So tell me then: who among us has won?