broken by Cyrus Marenzi

broken

CYRUS MARENZI

I wake up in the morning from the evening of Manhattan. One step at a time, through a mirror, a shower and a

careful bite of early air. I slowly dress in clothes of urban summer as I erase the sinful vulgarity of last evening’s desire.

He gives away a heavy stare, draped with charcoal circles underneath his eyes. He tries to understand the puzzle of my own as I begin the soft ritual of placing breakfast on the table. I offer dirty coffee in mugs of empty liquor, which to my surprise he refuses instantly. None for me, darling. A regretful whimper in the shades of his bedsheets.

I imagine myself as a whore in his mind, a forgetful romantic in search of desire. But my mind has become plain,

hammered, and empty. I have lost the ability to paint and exaggerate my face with emotion. His face, however, often

dressed with weary seduction, is painted heavily with the masculine colours of makeup. Alone, broken by the love

that we used to take great care of before the preying hands of violence intruded in on us. Pleasure does find its way from time to time, but only to slightly filter our reality of loss. Sometimes he enjoys pulling my pants down, counting the alphabet step by step with his tongue before pressing it against my cock. His fingers trace the murmurs of my mouth, searching for a new excitement as I trap them with my teeth. But now he is in his bed, the remnants of anger

still linger in his eyes that turn away from mine. The shouts and screams from last night still ring in his ears. And I have finished dressing myself in dull purity, shutting the crisp of my mouth to let the silence drain its last thirst before I open the front door to the scent of plain Sunday bagels.

“Why don’t you want to make love with me anymore? Please just tell me… Give me something. Let me know what you are thinking. What goes on in your mind? Why do you drink so much from the glass of pain?”, he asked in the dark of last night. Softly the mouth became heavy and breathing looked for its tranquility. He felt tired. His eyes melted into the background of his conscience, while my legs bent crookedly to the ground. They were shaped like broken wood, splinters running about the whole body. “You fuck me up one more time and I will kill you. Do you understand me?” A little closer to my ear, his mouth over me like a hawk. “Do you understand me?! You think you’re so smart with your composure and

arrogance! Shut up! You want me to hit you? To beat you up? Maybe that’s what’s best for you since you don’t have any worth left in you!” Eyes tired, they became so tired under the colours of violence. “You don’t understand me, do you? Un-

derstand me! Listen to what I have to say you fucked up moron! You are pathetic, pathetic! Out of my face! You make me sick! You are a fucked up son of a bitch! Listen to me! You touch me one more time and I will kill you! Do you understand me?” The hawk sharpened its claws in front of me. “Do you understand me?!” At the end, when the throat scratched for

air and the scream died to a hummer, he started plucking his tears out with his fingers and placed them in a growing anger. He left. The feet echoed with the puddles of his shouts lingering in the room.

“Because you lock my body as a desire that only belongs to you! I gave it to you while I still held it in my hands, when I was sure I would never let go of it. You reached forward to touch it. And then you grabbed hold of it, invading its territory, ignoring my guidance.” My voice followed his footsteps to the quiet bedroom. “You used to have a heart that was so generous, when I could still feel its power as it shaped the love I had for you. But, you became worried. You saw the other men as a threat and counted them one by one before the numbers led you to your obsession. That’s when I first felt the anger within you. You had no control over it and used me to mold it over my own flesh. You tried to cut my feet to the size of your own. You stretched my knees to follow your height. You measured the shapes of my face to sculpt it as your own. You pulled my mind underneath the covers of your skin, not letting me breathe to release the collar struggling around

my throat.”

I have lines of pain still sheltering in my eyes as I feel the burn of the morning sunrise. The door shut behind me

and I found myself outside by the streets of the city. The Bagel Shop, where we would always have breakfast, was

already climbing up to his room as I heard the oven breathing out its sesame and bread. Every Sunday he would go

down to order two bagels, and then walk right back up to share them with me.

Nowhere could I find a taxi, so I held on to my crippling body back to my own apartment 10 blocks up. We never had a home where we would share our lives together, where we would create a nest with our arms to lay our heads on. Our distance is what first built our strength. I would always come down to lay kisses on his forehead on 18th Street, and he would climb up with his strong knees to ring on my door on 28th. But, it became too hard, too far to see one another clearly. And I was weak when my desires scattered elsewhere, when the distance we first drew became even stronger. His questions felt heavy, possessive, and hurtful. Wherever he could find a hold on my mind, he devoured it whole like sweet red candy, and I bleached my tongue from every taste of emotion with a big bottle of white Clorox.

I lock my front door, undress myself down to my underwear, and pour a cup of chamomile tea. I add sugar, discomfort, and tears to my drink. Warm smoke slowly drifts away in a forgotten sleep, as I gently let time stir my mind in the liquid of my past.

I hurt him in ways that broke his mind, that made him vile and bitter by my own wrongdoings. He taunted me

with words too heavy to hold. Commitment. Monogamy. Marriage. I answered by stealing the lock he had on my body, luring even more men into its very confines. My infidelity became a shield to fight off his expectations of me. I could spit at his words with enough wounds to mark his flesh. Their scars kept on scratching his skin in their sharp and twisted curves, ready to shackle me down with their chains ringing in my ears.

I took my hand and stroked the waves of shame off my scalp, a crown too heavy to hold that is broken by exhaus-

tion and loss. My speech was silent. My cheekbones enhanced my coloured sadness. Shoulders slightly curled in. I didn’t even have time to finish my tea before I climbed in bed with the afternoon light still pouring out its mid-June heat.

“You meet with other men beneath my very own shadow! And you expect me to be the one to save you from your fucking misery? To protect you when you have shattered the bonds of our love? What is wrong with you? You are a twisted motherfucker.” His voice invaded the remnants of my thoughts as I could hear the night getting deeper and deeper. “A little whore at that. Don’t you think? Even you know it, admit it. A little whore. Huh? It’s true, don’t you think so?” My answers were muffled in tears that kept me from breathing out my words. “Why is that? Hmmm? Do you wanna be used like a slut? But yes. That explains everything. You’re just a whore. A little whore, darling. But little whores, you have to punish them, you have to make them cry, make them suffer,… They love that sort of thing. No? Answer me! It’s not such a difficult question, especially since that is how you treated me!” His shouts were piercing through the walls, making them crack in their weakness as they surrendered to his strength. “I wish I could hit you with a sharp glass and curve it right

around your face, from the tip of your eyebrow right to your under eye. Carve a moon into your mind. To the white bone of your lies.” In the past, he was able to wash off these dangerous emotions from drowning me, but anger now had a stronger rope strangling around the tightness of his throat, waiting to snap its cord and begin its dance with dreadful accusations.

“Then do it! Carve your anger onto my skin. Swear it as your own. Here are my hands for you to take. I offer them palm up as libation to feed your hate. Com’on! Show me. If you were a man, you would take bravery and claim it as a weapon. You would not feel so weak, trying to protect yourself with shame, anger, and defeat. Why do I have to bear the loss all alone? It’s so hard to hold it all by myself. My body is not strong enough to keep it over my own shoulders...”

I fold my arms made out of paper, twisting and ripping the skin beneath the sheets of blue origami. I couldn’t fall

asleep. In my bed, I feel the presence of a body breathing next to my own. His face is turned away, revealing a back

that is left shapeless. My hand covers the empty space, palm digging deep.

I wish I could wash off my shame from taking hold of me. The words were within grip to offer my release and clemency. They slithered quietly unto my lips to find their territory but were soon ambushed by the overwhelming guilt of careless behaviour and tired disappointment. I couldn’t pull them out of their roots. I used everything I could

to tear them from the source of their seeds, to hold them as my own. I used a shovel to dig deep in the earth, sharp

shears to cut through the barrier of weeds, my very own hands clawing at them. But, their strength and resilience made my wrist feel weak and my shoulders too heavy, as if I did not deserve to be offered their nutrition to comfort

my pain.

His sweat was bleeding on his chest to an uncontrollable fluid. The curtains touched the heart within the room. He shut them closed, making the walls lose their pale colours from the silent moon. He spat and slapped my cheek, and then healed it with his lips. The finger on chin, the eyes that followed mine. My body couldn’t fight. It could not escape his bounds. His desires became only his own. He refused to share them with me. The lust he felt was a punishment, and it needed its release on a victim that didn’t have any strength left to scream. There he tore open my naked body, and nowhere was there enough room to spread my wings and flee.

I didn’t know if I was any good. If I was still strong. Strong enough to fight and breathe. Maybe I chewed too hard and was too weak to take another bite. It was too bitter. Too bitter to feel its taste in my mouth. I betrayed my body to him and let him scar me with his dangerous anger. An anger that held tight around the shapes of my hands and fingers.

Still in my bed, the afternoon bade its goodbyes to the electrical current of the evening coming from outside. The

rain soon started to fall and the thunder slumbered out its yawns.

I remembered back in the day when he still had a softness on his face. His lashes were brown and thick, almost

too heavy to keep his eyes open in front of me. I followed the movement of my finger to his lips, almost touching the petals of a red rose. He was shy, did not share my seduction. But soon enough his mouth bloomed into a ray of gentle white teeth. I imagined him in his underwear. I counted his fingers, his years, his breath, his face. We talked. We screamed. We cried in our deepest sleep. He was a treasure in my imagination… He brushed his hand like paper against my skin, writing words that whispered from his mouth like young poetry. A composure settled between us. We stared for as long as we could, trying to follow the circles of our eyes that continued on and on.

But then I could not hold on to that memory anymore. It became too hard to find him again after time had passed. His wants became too demanding. His desires were the more threatening. He wanted to hold on to love by

locking my body as his treasure. My mind could no longer let itself be taken by the current that he pushed unto me.

It needed its release and distractions from other men to let the agony calm down to a slow hummer.

After his cries were over, after he had covered my own with his hand over my mouth, our silence revealed a pain that could no longer be sewed back together. My back was against the wall with my forehead buried deep between my knees. He left me there to open the door to the bathroom, crying little mumbles as he took a shower to clean the dirt that had settled on his skin. Mine still had his scent marked everywhere. Even without his grip he still held on to me tightly. The smell invaded my skin already heavy with terrifying pain. My mouth trembled without a voice. It couldn’t find any

freedom to release its breath.

I could feel his rage when he slowly used his hands to touch and abuse my body. The melancholy in his movements revealed themselves on the wounds of my skin. The troubled thoughts that growled within him needed to leave their mark on someone else. And they found their place on my body through red marks and bruises that bloomed with the breath of his lips, before I closed my eyes and opened them again to hear the tears finally breathe alive.

A sharp light trembled into the room with a faint whisper. It soaked my body at around 8 o’clock in the morning

as the cars started to sigh their growls from outside streets. Sunday was over.

I woke up with the crawling lines of the evening still lingering on my face. Eyes, coloured chestnut, reach the drips of the sink to cool down the dry crusts that closely shut their sight. Then I reach my own shower, finally willing to clean off the scent of him and reclaim the bounds of my own territory.

My arms grow to the ground, fingers twirling into limbs of morning flowers. Eyes closed. Face curled in. Becoming a child again. Back to the womb of the earth. And I find myself underneath the rocks of the ocean. In a cave of perfumed slumber. Naked. Painted with the oranges and roses from the distant sky. My arms are folded across my chest. My body begins to feel less heavy. I weave my skin slowly with my lips, and my fingers become needle and thread with matching colours of soft cream. I wash myself with salt, scraping the impurities. Returning me to the state of

innocent virginity. My back becomes a dreary circle, as my spine stretches itself and cracks out its naked branches.

I still remember the times on a crisp morning Sunday... He would give me a big bottle of smiles, laying it in my

hands as a gift to unfold, and I would always drink it vividly like medicine. The Bagel Shop then called on us as its

door chimed every few minutes. Its warmth slipped right through his open window... But, Sunday was over. Morn-

ing hit me with a stronger light as I got out of the shower. The sounds of the city became louder and brighter as the

day gained its energy. I can already hear the soft rhythm of the subway singing a beginning lullaby.