She had been trying for years to write, but even when she managed a line or two, she couldn’t or wouldn’t use the personal pronoun. The habit of alibi prevented her. Anyway, she was no longer convinced that she possessed a character so resolved it could boost about itself: I, I, I! When she did write it, it was followed by a period. I. It might as well be her initial, as in “I. sat alone in the way that the terminally ill, crowded into an institution, sit alone.”









