| The tears that came caught her by surprise. She thought at first that she might be crying for Michi, even if selfishly it was only for her loss, or perhaps even for Sam, or her parents, but none of this was true. She was crying for herself. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she felt so alone and desperate that they kept coming, and she hugged herself tight, trying to stop but could not. She wept so hard she made herself retch. She crouched over to throw up, the shower water quickly washing away the thick, clear bile. There was hardly anything in her stomach even before she had vomited. She remembered that all she had eaten yesterday was a few pomegranate seeds, and she felt hungry all of a sudden. The tears had stopped, without her even realizing it. She didn't want them to come again, so she clenched her fists and banged them against her legs. Keep going, she told herself, get yourself clean and then you can figure out what needs to be done. At its simplest, she thought, life wasn't so different from prison. Make it through one day at a time, that's all you had to do. And if you were still alive and kicking the next day, so much the better. |
