At five years old I knew the world was a cruel place. I saw my father grasp his chest and scream in a rattling way. I remember the thump of his carcass on the floorboards, the wild fear in his eyes, and when his eyes locked onto mine I remember clearly for the first time that I saw a man cry. That was the last act those eyes would commit. When I sobbed in the alien air of the funeral parlor, the river pooling down my face, I was awarded asylum—youth was a forgivable weakness.
From that moment on I was embroiled in a battle against the legacy of man. For every routine hurt that would sabotage my youth, I had to fight back the tears that yearned for release. I was terrified. If to let my eyes water was to embrace the moments before death, I was sure I didn’t want to go quite yet. This persisted into my teens, when hurts became possible through words and broken dreams. I let these trials pass through, I often felt like a stone statue wearing away. My eyes felt like a martyr at the stake, I was withholding this pain for a great cause, at least I thought, the vivid thrush of life.
I grew older still. I felt romance smolder in the pit of my stomach, retching acid burns through my heart. The pangs of life pockmarked me like a dart board, still I soldiered on. Eventually I realized that women were able to cry without retribution, even freely. There was something hidden in that additional “X” chromosome, a free pass of sorts. I was envious of every magnanimous hurt that rattled through their fragile frames. The earth shattering quakes as they fell into the fault-lines of their personal despair. I was a ghost, an emotional vampire; I could merely stare in envy, living vicariously through their emotional release.
A girl I would later realize I loved was afraid of me. She battered me with passionate munchkin fists, demanding I spout those burning tears for her reassurment. She was leaving me. She wondered how I could stare blankly at the fathomless depths of the floor and not feel anything. If only she knew then that I was a cataclysm in the making. I stared into her eyes, they were pitifully drenched, I saw my reflection back in them---the watery sheen of her irises felt like damnation. I couldn’t summon the decency to tear up and commiserate the misery of our demise. It was at that moment she told me that only real men cry.
I managed to make my way to middle age. I encountered the slow burn of time tethering me to the grave. Somehow women were drawn to me like moths to a parasitic flame. Every tear they shed at the expanse of a man emotionally dead cracked the foundation of my terminal wall. Their wailing sobs became the soundtrack of my middle years. I was hoarding despair to satiate the barren desert in my eyes. I was told I was broken.
A century halved tormented my flesh; I grappled with the demons that refused to escape. If gravity were a palpable essence I would’ve sworn the earth was reclaiming me. I stumbled through the broken halls of my life breathing woe at the empty frames that gazed listlessly back at me. My eyes found their damnable twins in the dust-coated mirror that haunted my days. The orbs staring back resembled caked-dry madness---it was around this time I began courting madness. For every morning I would spend broken, willing anything to reflect back, I remained a withered simulacrum of a former man.
I woke up in the necrotizing cold of a December day feeling my father’s ghost breathing down on me. Inexorably drawn to my spectral face, the mirror whispered my swan song that day. A new light gleaned in my eyes, a holy infusion spilling out from my desecrated shell. Suddenly I felt fire coaxing brimstone through my veins. Collapsing within the heap of my sorrows, I began contorting the tangled strings of my frayed life-line. A slow explosion was gaining fervor within my heart; I felt my jaw scrape my chest as I punctuated the air in vocal duress. Those screams reverberated in the halls of desolation; I writhed in the mute horror of a body’s mutinous curtain call.
Was it the light fading that usurped me? I felt more than saw my vision blurring. For every diminutive fist that attempted to beat a response out of me, I couldn’t help but wonder why in this moment of finality. Gasping crimson, I lurched myself towards the tenuously shaking glass. Staring back was the corpse of a man. I felt it stop, the rhythmic thump of life’s beat.
The requiem began with a sole drip of saline.
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