Bella Akhmadulina is a poet whose poems are known and loved by more than one generation of readers, but, in addition, she is a wonderful author of subtle and tender prose. This collection is dedicated precisely to this part of Akhmadulina’s work. It includes stories, memoirs, essays and articles about literature. In the author's memoirs, our famous contemporaries appear before us: Vysotsky, Shukshin, Okudzhava, Dovlatov, Venedikt Erofeev. The articles include Pushkin, Lermontov, Nabokov, Tsvetaeva, seen through the unique eyes of the book’s author. Extracts from the diary tell about the most important meetings of the poet in literature and life. But this book is also about love - for people, for art, for cities, for nature and animals, about what we all sometimes lack and so want.