“You’re giving up poetry?”
Rune and I had been living together for almost two years, though because of our often-conflicting schedules and her infrequent wakefulness, our actual time together may have totalled only a handful of days.
“I’m not giving it up. I’m giving it up for a while. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll stab myself to death with my pencil.”
It was seven thirty in the morning, and we were both in the bathroom. I was standing at the toilet and Rune was looking into the mirror and rubbing her eyes. I’d just arrived home from the condominium where I’d spent the first four hours of my shift writing wild, stream-of-consciousness verses meant to reflect the mind of a writer suffering a nervous breakdown and the next four hours wondering if I was verging on a similar fate.
“Maybe you
