The Premonition

it was a little like living in Moomin Valley, where the sun never sets. Days that were endless, but which you could only take one at a time, with no sense of what was coming tomorrow . . . I still can’t shake it. It lives inside me like a curse or a blessing.

A sudden rustling in your chest. A premonition of understanding. You feel you might be on the verge of uncovering something . . . You’re a little fearful, oddly excited, and somehow forlorn . . . Like there’s something coming around the next corner that’s going to turn everything you know about yourself on its head.

I'd never known a love before that could blot out the world around like this.

I guess you need to have a home before you can run away from it, I thought, and I felt it in my heart.

It’s nice how the same person always comes back. So you don’t feel lonely.

I had a premonition of setting out on a journey and getting lost inside a distant tide as the sun went down, ending up far, far away from where I started.

In coming to an end, it had given me something, and only by making my way through was I able to begin to live the rest of my life.

When people see too many of something, it just makes them feel sad. No one knows why.

I never knew until I lived there that sound could sometimes become visible to the eye. But no—the sight somehow felt more familiar. The elegant melody awakened a sweet feeling in me, as if I’d once spent long days just like that, watching sounds, somewhere in the distant past.

The more beautiful a night away from home was, the more regretful it made you feel

What had possessed them to visit the gates of the underworld on a family vacation?

He seemed to be a stranger to ambivalence, or in-between expressions, and was almost uncannily polite.

I imagined my aunt saying goodbye to people in the same categorical way, and started to feel a little despondent.

Later, for the first time in a very long time, I heard my aunt play the piano. Its tone was soft, and just like I remembered it. At the kitchen window one overcast afternoon, I watched its beautiful music as it flowed from her room upstairs, threaded through the trees in the garden, and slipped away into the gray sky.

He met challenges head-on, fearlessly, and had a natural strength and positivity that stopped him from letting his doubts turn into problems for other people.

I nostri destini si erano separati, e ognuno di noi era diventata grande seguendo la sua strada. Ormai tornare indietro era impossibile. I miei erano semplici rimpianti, che valevano meno di zero, un inutile spreco si per lei che per me, perciò cercai di ricacciarli via.

Forse era solo il breve sogno di un'altra me stessa che non aveva più nessuna possibilità di vivere in questo mondo.