Matching ILY hand sign tattoos on wrists

Sister Agnes caught me again at Compline, my fingers going at the edge of the refectory table like a pair of wrens. Mother Superior says the Rule permits signs for necessary things only, and that a sign for "I love you" is not necessary, though she was smiling when she said it. I have decided it is necessary. Nobody here has said it to me aloud in nine years.

Brother Tobias, who keeps the bees, taught us the hands the year the wall came down between the orchard and the infirmary. He said the old Benedictines at Fontenay made a whole language out of gesture so that no word would be wasted on silence. I wonder if they ever made the one with the little finger out like a shepherd's crook and the thumb poked sideways, because I have been making it at you across the grille every Sunday since you went to the nursing school in Lincoln.

Here is what I did. I pressed a heart into a stub of candle wax with the bottom of a thimble, then set it on the sill of the infirmary window where you could see it from the lane. When you came back on the Thursday bus, you held your own hand up against the glass, and I held mine up, and our two wrists lined up like the halves of one prayer. Sister Agnes saw, said nothing, and went on with the linen.

I am writing this down so the words exist somewhere besides my hands. Come Sunday. Bring the gloves with the holes in the thumbs. We will sign until the bell.

Yours in the old silence, Clare