"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Salvage Efforts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

of us.

A hand that felt different from my husband's in texture, composition, and
temperature slapped some part of me for which I had no name.

Someone I couldn't see, someone to whom I didn't know whether I had ever been
introduced, had touched me. Anger spread through my every thread. The touch was
not unpleasant or invasive or harmful, but nevertheless, it was a violation. My
husband shouldn't have put me in this position.

Yet what could I do?

Well, what could I do?

I unmeshed my threads. Anger gave me the power of fray. I let myself go over and
over again.

I don't know how long this orgy of disintegration lasted. It frightened me while
I was in the midst of it -- what if I could never recollect myself again? As
connections unraveled I grew farther away from myself. Thoughts and intentions
fragmented.

Let him stand there naked, wherever he is, I thought while I still could. It
wasn't much of a revenge -- he had talked himself out of much worse situations,
and nakedness didn't bother him. It was what was in my power, the best and worst
that I could do.

Near the end I understood this was a decision I might never recover from, but I
couldn't reverse it.

I wasn't sure I wanted to.

There were many tastes and textures on the floor, where more and more of me
piled.

Before I could make sense of these new tastes, I lost track of myself and
subsided into some lower state of consciousness where thoughts traveled through
me without ever rubbing together.

I OPENED EYES, and thought how strange that was. Light and shadow mixed and
sorted into some kind of view. I blinked. Eyelids! It took time for me to
understand what I was looking at. Intense dark squares and rectangles with
colors in them, scattered over a light yellow background. Our bedroom wall,
impressionist prints tacked up, all our favorites. Whenever we got tired of one,
my husband could change it by willing it to be something else.

I lay on our bed, aware of the sheets above and below me in all their myriad
threads, warm but unalive.

The bed dipped as my husband sat beside me. His face was pale. "What got into