Sam Son – Serena R

December 1, 2025

I got married too old and divorced too young. High school sweethearts who
ate standing up. I was good looking if
you averted your gaze. I got by. When I really look
back, it was just another night. But my husband Sam’s vision had gone mean
and he wrung my neck
like a tea towel. Against the evening, I felt cold. It was the way he created vertigo or was
it really
that he stopped it. It was the way in which all the
nothing- going-on writhed to
the front and as his grip pulsed I felt
cold so jealous. It was then I saw my own self,
I was crouching above my own self, adjusting the waist of my skirt,
and my sweet husband Sam was beating the shit out of me. Lucky man. I tried counting to
a special number I had come up with as
a girl. The point was I couldn’t
reach it because the number
wasn’t real. I felt myself thud against
myself. Then, everything wetted.
Atonal. I wept for Sam as he ran out of rage
and released my neck. I wept because after
that, where else would he go? He could have really
had me, done me there. Now he had to have me as his wife again. The yard stopped
its undulating. It lasted maybe,
fifteen minutes. Even now as I sleep,
I can recall that shade of white,
clean, cataract white. It was malignant.
Cold sheets of gas. It was by Sam, and I never knelt for Sam,
had no patience for him. I never believed he would come romance me nor did I
wash his
feet. Sam was contemptible and everywhere,
and the only important thing he did in our short
residency was that, was fuck me with
negative space. That I can’t forgive him for,
fattening me up with it. I endured
first as myself,
winning against myself, glassing
my husband who was
beating the shit out of me. Those were the first fantasies. Then I grew
restless. I wanted to see the white again,
unmarried. I was too old
and loose skinned. I’ll tell you what I decided to do one night, at the end of my life, when I
decided it was
beauty that had been wrung out of me and beauty
wrestled with ideas, evaded them. Ideas were for the celibate and sexless. Sam had already
done me and only once. I started bandaging
my ageing neck. Never again, would I deal
with the bad mannered hands of a
man. My husband was unfortunately,
terrifyingly immanent. How could Sam have been beautiful? He was a man of
ideas. He sat and thought, cast a
flaccid net, and spoke half-heartedly at dinner. The knife, he held the
wrong way. The only real thing he did
was beat the shit out of me. A man’s work. Even
then, it was sloppy. I could taste the bright
brassy
child’s number in my mouth, the little O of
my doll head. I became a
a girl myself, after that
yard party.
The blinds remained shut. If I could be
seen, I could be had again. Like Sam had
me. They slapped him twice on the wrists, if
that. I felt unspeakably bad. God help me.
I started dressing. I wanted beauty to come
back to me,
not through white, but in the way in which
he forced it all, the wild grass,
to
come forward, to mean too much. And words.
I hated words. I was an old woman by the end of the first
fantasies. I should have just
hung myself. That
wasn’t enough. I wanted to hold it all
the wrong way. I wanted to understand how
the threshold seemed to convulse. Man insists,
  TO SEE IS TO
    BELIEVE. I found him by chance, the
boy, much later and still too soon. His hair was luxurious and he walked at pace, a real
thinker, his lazy neck on display in the sun.
I only wanted to
watch. I really did. I circled three times,
his path. I felt so scared.
I cleared my throat and asked
once, twice, for help. He stared through me
and straight down. It couldn’t have been that hard
to say no. His body was so
taut as
the night clicked
and I had him. He was young enough to have come from
me. It did work, sufficiently, because he was
beautiful. I thought of
reaching for a belt,
a shoelace. From his uniform unspooled a
ligature. I just wanted him
to see. I twisted and twisted towards
clarity. I was
mercy.
In the end he came closer so I touched his hair.