I knew there was nothing to me then but passing time. Nothing to me but the weeks the sheets were spotted with blood, nightclothes twisted with sweat, time itself seeping out of me. I’d spent several months balled into myself, my body clenched like a jaw, then slack as a mouth pulled open by sleep. I felt my strength draining away and thought I might cut lines across my skin with broken glass, create brilliant red patterns on the bedding. I knew it was cowardly to think like that. To live, that was the thing that would be difficult. I rolled over and watched a flock of seabirds obscure the sky for a moment, and then nothing but a pale, high blue.
Eventually, I got up, washed and dressed and went into the dining hall. I was silent as I ate with the nuns and the other women who were convale
