Desde Mona

desdemona, bugatti, a single man, no kids     -anon               

The only thing that ever belonged to me was the heart of a girl named Mona. 

You read it like it is a romance and I am a poet. If I could look you in the eye the same way you are looking into my soul (for you read these secret words, do you not?), I would laugh at you.

But by the end of this, maybe you will be laughing at me.

“Marco,” the man said after unlocking the front door, “Welcome to America!” And then he laughed, like you will be laughing. And after he laughed, he shut the door and left, just like you will leave once my story is over and your palate is satisfied. That was the same day I found Mona and stole her heart.

It has only been half a minute and I’ve already lied to you. I own two things. Besides Mona, I have my name, though to be fair even that is often borrowed and twisted, like the doorknob greased over by the man’s hands. My name is not Marco; it is Markus. Perhaps he assumed there was an “o” at the end because of the Spanish I spoke. And I have been to America before; things are just different right now. He was an assuming, racist prick. Verdaderamente, es como el infierno. 

“This really is like hell,” I remember thinking when the light disappeared with the clicking of the door. I groped the walls, looking for a switch, but instead my hand came across something cold and hard. Cylindrical. Heavy. A jar? By that time, my eyes had gotten used to the dark. A streak of moonlight oozed through a crack in the roof. I held the thing in my hands and shook it.

Glug. Glug.

I moved towards the light and looked at it. Indeed, a glass jar. On it: my grimy, tired reflection. Then past my reflection and inside the jar itself: a handful of flesh floating around in slimy water. I nearly dropped the thing. It was a human heart. Scribbled on the bottom in what I supposed was permanent ink: “Mona.”

In the days that followed, I stayed as far away from the jar as I could. I could not go outside, so I hid it under the salvaged metal scraps of a junk-yarded Bugatti. I do not know if the scraps were, in fact, from a Bugatti. But a Bugatti would be a wonderfully irrelevant deus ex machina, one that would sweep me out of this infierno. And you see— what else can a prisoner do but appease himself with the comfort of his imagination?

But imagination was my only friend, and I longed for human contact. “Mona,” I would think to myself. Then, “Mona,” out loud. My hoarse voice bounced from wall to wall; perhaps her heart could hear me calling. “Mona, mi amor, my love, how did you end up like that?” I would stare into the glass, seeing my reflection first and then Mona. We went on adventures together; I rescued her from towers, stole paintings for her. I imagined her saying my name—not Marco, but Markus. Kus. Kus. Kiss. If only there was a mouth to accompany her heart. 

Yet because she had no mouth, Mona could not laugh at me; she could not disagree. No language separated us: she spoke to me in metaphors and I spoke back in words. I loved her for it. But one day, in the heat of an argument (I was winning, of course), I smashed the jar onto the ground. 

Mona lay there, splattered. 

After many months, I left her for good. I did not feel anything when Mr. America came and swept me away. “Marco,” he called; “Señor,” I answered. The experience was nothing like a Bugatti escape. He moved me to another shack, another state, another darkness. 

Pero desde Mona, nada y todo ha sido igual. 

Figure out for yourself what that means. I’m tired of translating.