a broken body, born anew
by river budur
Guest contribution by river budur for PERSPECTIVES.
from my crippled house to yours. one body to another. this act of holding, of remembrance- with gratitude and with grief. and finally, a kiss on the forehead of each jagged bone as i lay you unto rest.
انّا لِلّه وانا اليه راجعون
am i a delicate porcelain vase?
fragile and beautiful.
painted with flowers and
two wisps of birds
glazed to charming imperfection.
if you touch me, i might break
so you fracture me with your careful gaze
– a shard from “i am an object your eyes behold”, my poem
the body// fragile, cracked, breaking. broken.
(de+re)constructed. [a formula to measure the shape caused by two parallels intersecting dissimilarly]
the land as body. the house as body. the body as house,
the walls carved. scarred.
the bones, the remains, the corpse of the house, unburied, rebuilt.
the body as witness. the bones always remember.
the house (body) is witness (shahaada, شهادة) to the violence it endured, and housed.
and i wonder-
these porcelain shards. fragments separated from each other, body broken and misshapen, (de+re)formed.
what did they see? what were they witness to?
the eyes of the monster that ate off them? the monstrosity he unleashed? did they bleed with the شهداء?
did the plates cry? did they shatter and bleed like my heart does when i think of this?
did the walls crack and cry? the walls that heard their pain and agony. that witnessed the violence, that has their blood and screams and whispers, and bitter prayers to a god that has deemed them unholy, pain/ted onto them.
that witnessed their despair as they had to confess the names of their lovers for this torture to end, knowing they’re assigning their lovers to the same cruel fate?
the flesh, fresh and bleeding, dark and decaying, bruised and buried behind the porcelain blue. pretty on the eyes, a dainty veneer covering the gruesome, the ugly, the deformity.
that is my body.
fine china broken and shattered
by default and by the hands meant to hold it with care
again and again
this misshapen body. (de+re)formed. rivered in cracks.
deepening canyons.
every now and then one slowly turns gold- kintsugi. a leaf in autumn.
the scars that remain, witness to the violence endured. the cruelty of evidence of the violence and suffering lost to memory. when it isn’t visible on the body. the searching. the need for a record, for the score.
A slightly blurry photograph of a number of wooden crates and glass boxes on a wooden floor. Light flows from the central box, both streaming out at the bottom, and puncturing through in dots and stripes at the top parts. In the glass boxes, unidentifiable objects can be seen.
the boxes, (de+re)assembled.
the current resting place of the remains. the coffins, the graves.
perhaps then
the archive is a graveyard.
a cemetery (asymmetry)
[انّا لِلّه وانا اليه راجعون]
the holy house, the ka’aba.
the believers assembled around them.
the house of god that no one but the keyholders and those deemed fit by them allowed entry.
them assuming their godness, as authorities of purity and faith. much like de mepsche. and his house. who gets to enter? who gets to leave? who gets to stay and who gets to be free?
a room and a window
with a door that won’t open
a cold bed warmed by your body
folded unto it.
a 2*(4ft + 2ft) patch of sun on
the dead white tiles.
rectangles upon rectangles.
(the body, a wrecked tangle)
did the basement have a window? perhaps at the top, where the sunlight could worm its way through?
the house as prison vs home. a house isn’t home simply because it has four walls and a roof.
a window- from which you see a glimpse of sky. a sliver of cloud. a shiver of leaves.
two fleeting songbirds at rest.
a home is built with love. for and with. heart and heart and hands.
the room a cage, the room as solace.
spinning things gold. this skeleton that has housed violence unthinkable, looks like a small green moth. looks like the house of god that held my heart when i was 8. looks like these gnarled, deformed bones. peeling back, flesh revealing. looks like rectangles upon rectangles upon our beings briefly tangled.
the windows house the marrows of this soul. the sun angles at 6 p.m, the walls gleam gold and shadows, and my twisted form presents itself lovable against it.
the heart breaks. the heart sheds. the heart heals. and a body emerges. anew.
rinse and repeat.
and repeat.
[انّا لِلّه وانا اليه راجعون]
about the author:
“I am a trans-disciplinary artist, who has been playing with words and colors for as long as I can remember. As someone who wasn’t allowed to go out for the majority of my life, writing and illustrating was my way of creating colour and joy in the isolation.
My works mainly revolve around disabled bodies— celebrating, glorifying, romanticizing what has traditionally been considered grotesque, and attempting to question and reimagine the idea of what a body is. I also dabble in poetry and the occasional photo/video art, performance art, and body documentation, though I feels most at home illustrating self-portraits, abstract interpretations of disabled anatomy, queer love and queer characters.
I use a walker as a mobility aid and my relationship with it as a body part is a recurring motif in my digital illustrations and my poetry. The interplay between my transmasculinity and my disability also informs my practice, and so does living estranged from birth family in a metropolitan city largely inaccessible yet manageable in pockets.”