A soldier grabbed my husband's hair like a handle. He lifted his head, slightly, from the table. Death defines itself in the ideal state of no resistance. Here women come to identify the bodies of those they built their lives around. But how much grief can four walls sustain before they collapse over our heads?

I nodded. The soldier dropped my husband's head back onto the table. The rest of his body did not respond. He did not seize the soldier by the throat and smash into the wall his perverted smile, like a crushed snail.

At that moment, a spider born in my stomach began to crawl around, searching for a place to weave its web.

The soldier suddenly softened. An artificial soft, accompanied by a smile brimming with small erections. The snail slightly lifted its head.

The soldier stretched out his hand, the same that had just grabbed my husband's hair, and moved it toward my chest. I imagined his hand passing through a magic wall, as if through a portal, splashing into the darkest part of the ocean. I imagined his arm severed at the wrist, fingers devoured by starving sharks, while I stood still, watching him plead for help.

Instead, his already cupped palm stopped at my breast. And squeezed. Just once. As if he were inspecting something buried there. Something that belonged to him. A special treat he had been saving for after dinner. The snail extended itself suddenly, as if grabbed by its genitals.

My dead husband did not stir. He did not shatter the soldier's curved palm.

I stood still. Longing for the world to end in that instant, willing to sacrifice my daughter for a new beginning.

Slowly, his fingers retreated, as if peeling off a plastic tattoo. He looked satisfied. As if the palm of his hand had left an ornate design. One which he had selected out of many other designs, for just such an occasion.

Then the soldier returned the hand, that lifted and dropped my husband's head onto a table, that measured the ripeness of the breast hanging shamefully now over my heart, to his gun.

He transformed into the statue of a soldier. The snail looked off into the distance, like all statues do. They would deliver the body in a few days, he said. I did not respond. We'll bring him to your door.

I turned to leave. Then stopped. To say a prayer for the misery of an unconsenting room. I passed through the doorway. In the hall, a young girl stood, sewing her eyes to the floor, waiting for her turn.

Shabnam Piryaei was born in Iran and raised in California. She currently resides in New York. She was awarded first place for the 2007 Poets & Writers Amy Award for Poetry. Her collection of writings Ode to Fragile is forthcoming.