Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener

Author:Gabriela Wiener
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Between a white woman and a Latino man, I’ve been bitten by the monster. I tell my feminist groups that at home I’m the one who’s oppressed. No one believes me because I make more money than my spouses. But my life is what transpires between a white woman and a man. Every time I try to sleep with her, I think of him. Not only in his naturally helpless state. I also picture him down there, sneaking into the bedroom of a friend we’ve been putting up since the day Roci came home and told us she felt suffocated by our family structure. Now we’re a different kind of human grouping. Our friend sleeps in the basement in the room next door to Jaime’s, but I don’t sleep, I stare up at the ceiling and swear I can see them in the dim dungeon light, bodies entwined and eyes gleaming as they whisper unusual thoughts into each other’s ears, reading to one another from arcane books and being intimate at my expense. I don’t know what hurts more, that he still needs me or that he doesn’t anymore. There’s nothing I can do for him while I’m up here. Roci, on the other hand, has me all to herself but has no use for me right now.

I wait for her to doze listlessly off in our bed, like an angel statue on a mausoleum. I make sure she is sound asleep, the furthest away she’s been from me since I came back. Then I get up from the bed, fumble silently through the dark, walk downstairs, and push open the door, ready to find him with our roommate; I’m relieved and a bit guilty to see he’s still in his room, the same singular shape as ever, a lone snoring silhouette, the man I’ve betrayed with another man, who shares me with another woman, whom I’ve supplanted in our bed. I slip into the sheets that envelop his body and hold him under the blanket as though I’ve actually been lying beside him all along and had just rolled away for a second so my arm wouldn’t fall asleep. He’s warm, breathing, and appears to be safe.

But I can’t stay with him long either. I try to fall asleep to no avail. Because now I’m picturing her alone in our inhospitable bed, startled by a vibration on her phone, a blue light that wakes her and to which she willingly surrenders her body. In this bitter fantasy, I see her sheltering in virtual windows that let in evil, seductive forces to suck up the silt of her pure, white, naked sediment. The bits I’m not eating anymore.

I am a raptor-turned-prey gliding wearily over her hunters. For a few seconds, all I want is to feel a predator’s profound relief.

I’m also scared of losing her in that brief window of time when I spread myself out the way poverty is spread throughout the world, unable to do justice to anyone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.