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I keep seeing those bike helmets everywhere and I imagine my husbands and lovers through the years wearing one and I just know life would have turned out differently. Even my children would have been other children because they would have had other fathers, probably from other countries where man and woman know that you can't fall in love with someone wearing a bike helmet.

City Sadness

It's a sky. It's a light. It's the city looking at itself in a Copenhagen Harbour mirror.
What is this sadness about?
Sadness is always about love.
But do we know? Do we know our love?
I recognize the sky, the light, the harbour mirror. I recognize the sadness. Maybe gloom is a better word.

Authority of Time

I know a man. I wanted to stay on that boat with him. Not forever, just stay there, as forever didn't exist. That was yesterday. In a few hours I will enter tomorrow.

Boy on the Beach

The girl had made a fine figure in the sand while he was out snorkling.
- An octopus! Do you see that?
I nodded.
A huge octopus reached out for several meters.
- She has made two others down the beach. A turtle and a lizard. She is really good.
He liked that she was good at making figures in the sand.
He also liked that she was as good as a boy in the water and when she sprinted through the burning sand with the long hair like a dragon's tail behind her.
She threw herself into a wave, showed up like a little seal, indeed ready to be looked at.
He digged.
The hole was so big that he could sit comfortably and monitor all activities along the beach.
- I want to reach the groundwater, he said.
- Go ahead. You are going to dig for a long time.
- You don't think I can do it.
One shouldn't tear down a child's belief.
- It will take a while, that's all.
The girl got up from the water and knelt beside the octopus. Her hair was no longer a dragon's tail. It looked like she wore a cape now.
- I want it to be big enough for two.
I was careful with my smile, even with my breath. This fledgling moment was not to be disturbed by some mother. The boy I once met didn't dig. He covered himself with sand. Finally his mother realized that it looked like she was talking to herself about the nice little girl who surely wanted to know his name and everything and cut off the flow.
- Are you ready?
His eager little face popped ud from the hole.
- Am I ready?
He moved to the side.
- There is plenty of room down here.
I shook my head slowly.
- Isn't it better for two children?
- And what about you?
- Me? 
- Of course you are going down in the hole with me. We'll be safe here if the wind decides to blow radiation from Japan to our island. I just need to find something for the roof.
The girl looked up from her octopus. She had refined one of its arms. Her long hair was hair in the wind now. The sun had dried it.
I jumbed in the hole.
- Careful, he said.
- What about the girl?
I couldn't help it. She kept looking at him, so patient, so calm. Though I kept my voice down.
He didn't. He didn't shout either. He spoke naturally.
- She can dig for herself. Do you have any ideas for the roof?
- I'll think about it, I said.
He got up from the hole and ran off to the shore, made a perfect header into the waves.
The girl made a nice header too. She came up and he went down. He came up and she went down.
I sat in the hole and looked at them.
I was absolutely sure I've told him. Radiation would never go that far.

Pain

It hurts. The breathing, the heartbeat, the bones in his body. She cried of love, she cried of anger. Now she sleeps like a baby. He kind of laughs. It's all in his mind. The legend in front of him. The jaw, the fist, the crowd. The crowd never believed in him. Why should they? It was a fucking legend in front of him. Him, who? He who had a plan. He walked up in that ring, he could already taste his own blood, he had a plan, the plan came true. To touch that jaw in front of the crowd, to lose in front of a legend. It kills their pain. The rest is nothing but entrails and bones and muscles. He kind of laughs. He would have lost any fight. Now she can sleep like a baby.

To get out of a book

What bothers me right now is, that no book is ever so important when finished as it was while I wrote it. Not to me at least.
It almost seems a little bizarre that I could be so honestly involved, so completely engrossed for such a long time.
Probably part of the reason why getting through with a book definitely is the worst part of my life as auther. And with a child's memory I forget it from one book to the other. I always think it's going to be a wonderful relief when it's carried out. I keep it in mind all the way as some crazy carrot.

I'm not gonna write this story

A bus, yellow because buses are yellow where I come from. 
A yellow bus waiting at the bus station. It leaves two minutes past. It's two minutes to three in the afternoon. The passengers have found a seat. Nobody is late for this bus. The next will be in an hour. 
A young girl has chosen a seat in the driver's side. She has got music in her ears, she doesn't look out, she is busy with her iPod.
The other five sit in the opposite side, evenly spread. Two men and three women, or three men and two women. No one could tell if they were asked an hour later.
They might as well get off. There is nobody at the busstation, just a child looking around as searching for something. She is too young to take the bus alone.
The surroundings are pretty. You have lengthy fields, mostly wheat and grass that year. At the end of your gaze the beech wood, a marvel of green, from inside the bus of course you don't see it. The waiting, that's what you see. 
The child is waiting to come out of hiding. She found a perfect place. The wheel is big and shady, bigger than her when she sits like that, crumpled up in front of the wheel. Her heart beats rapidly, she is always so exited, when she has found a really good hiding place. She can see the boy's feet. If he bent, he would see her right away. She knows, he won't bend because it seems like there is no place to hide.
Purple Rain goes on and on. It's like a chapter in a book. You have time to forget a whole world or you can go to the end of it. The young girl smiles. Prince softens her mouth into that little smile, a little dream, a memory. The movement of the bus, the beech, she sees it now. She even says goodbye to the driver as she gets off.
I'm not gonna write this story.
It's possible the young girl would remember a jolt, like hitting the curb and she would think of it as nothing but a curb as the driver would. I don't wan't them to be aware of any such thing. It's too late.