The Overlook Press

‘By now you will have become aware that the third cave corresponds to the third hole of the flesh and blood body that belongs to me. But the cave also belongs to you. It was only through you that it acquired its particular character. The body is a passageway – a channel, without which the two of us would not be able to exist in the way we do now, the way I know you and you know me. Without their mirror images, our original forms would not exist. The third cave is the third mirror. Love is the act of wandering in search of an unknown cave. Somewhere underground, deep, dark, echoing, amplified, frightening, bewitching, and utterly private, a secret for me, a single ship, a single concealed place.’

The candle left out on the windowsill had melted without ever having been lit; the wax collapsed pathetically under the sun’s fierce rays, its shape suggesting the peculiar
way love concludes.