Bullet Eclipse

bullet eclipse

an asylum for doubt

a saturated drought 

where your eyes spiral down

my arteries

unspoken words amble upon a shard 

of reason

of treason 

inoculation

against melancholia

palpitations

holding hands with dementia

I can now hear 

the moans of hysteria

 © Margaux Emmanuel

What do you think?”, he asked in that raspy voice of his, an unlit cigarette between his teeth, the “-k” firmly pressed against his palate in an assertive manner, while unscrewing a burnt-out lightbulb. She was sitting on the windowsill, only wearing his dark blue Lacoste polo shirt, unbuttoned. Her back was towards him but she could feel his every move, she knew that he would have that slight habitual scowl resting on his face and that he would mutter “shit” under his breath any second now, realizing that the lightbulb didn’t fit. “Shit”, he whispered. There it goes. “About that book of yours?”, she finally answered. She could sense his head’s nod, he was too busy to notice that she wasn’t facing him. She slowly brought her naked legs, covered in a thin layer of goosebumps from the chilly morning air, back into the apartment. He was standing on the old chair, the straw seat deforming from his weight, a dozen lightbulbs at the chair’s feet, slightly rolling back and forth, back and forth, from the uneven floorboards. His head was a harvest of untamed blond curls that he had never quite grown out, tickling the back of his shirt’s collar. He had those green-blue marshland eyes that would remind her of those times when she used to swim in the dark green creeks with the small-town kids. But then, suddenly, you had to quickly jump out to run after the ice-cream truck’s music, the water dripping off your wet body, tracing your steps on the concrete pavements. You would never quite see the truck, you could only hear it; you had to trust the melody. He hadn’t known her back then.   “What do you want me to think about it?”, she inquired with a slightly flirtatious grin after a long, reflective pause.  He let out a small laugh, still fiddling with the lightbulbs. “I… want you to think that it captures the beauty of your touch”, he said in an almost mocking manner, his eyebrows rising as he pronounced those words.  “That doesn’t really mean anything does it?”, she replied with a perplexed smile. “It doesn’t. You need to understand that you aren’t a muse; all of the sentences of my book are already written in the crevices of your skin.“ He was silent after that. "Well, you could do better then.

water sizzling on the concrete | © Margaux Emmanuel 

Liebestraum

Liszt’s Liebestraum playing in the background

She watched the two lovers while gripping a trembling glass in her hand. He caressed each note’s delicate skin, responding to every one of her quivers, covering her neck with slow kisses, holding her hand through the peril of the third candenza. No desires were left unfulfilled. Every pressed key said je t’aime, brought the two farther from the heavy haze of the day, interlaced into one dream of love unattainable by the mournful song of reality.

“Have you ever loved me?”, he asked. She turned back to him, unwillingly letting the pianist part from her sight. She took a nervous gulp from her drink, avoiding his eyes. She noticed that his lips were hanging apart, longing for an answer. Her eyes wandered again towards the origin of this music of the heavens. Was it jealousy that she felt? A bovarysme?

“Why did you ask me to meet you here?”, she finally replied in a low voice, not looking at him, the pain crawling onto her words.

“Mon amour”, he whispered, his shaking hands snaking towards hers. She let them intertwine.

Don’t call me that, she thought. She let him.

“This-”, she said, letting the words dangle in the air, her eyebrows scowling from the distress in the stiffness of his fingers. She stopped, licked her lips, and let the background melody inch back into her ears.

“This… has been over for a very long time, Arthur”, she finished, dipping into the placid waters of his brown eyes, in a cracked murmur.

The bags under his eyes were heavy, the tense lines of his face were hidden under a patchy beard; he hadn’t been sleeping for days. She had never called him Arthur. Resigned, they both moved their chairs in the direction of the pianist, sticky tears consoling their cheeks. They wondered what love was while watching the Liebestraum couple dance in such unison, wearing the foolish grin of passion, yet knowing that the night always ends.

“We never had that. We never had… anything”, he calmly said.

The pianist embraced his love one last time. His fingers parted from her thirsty touch, craving for more. The listener could almost hear their silent weep, could almost feel the suffering in his fingertips. He rose from his seat, bowed. Nobody applauded. He left the scene.

© Margaux Emmanuel

clumsy town boy

Your heart

is stuck

in a long

car ride

edging

an endless

desert

empty

road

in 1973

sitting in

the backseat

reading Kerouac

butter-colored

baseball cap

no watch

timeless

wrist

high school

bomber jacket

covering a

white shirt

a chagrined

blue bra

his

aviator

Ray Bans

sliding down

the bridge

of its nose

listening

to the cassette

of a shattered

existence.

Two years

thousands of miles

away

he’s still

the one

appearing

in the

highway landscapes

ghostlike

you can almost

smell

his cologne

you thought

that you had

written

the last act

of that

tragedy

licked the seal

of that envelope.

But the trunk

is still

full of his

letters

the cursive ink

bruises you

at night

oh

the clumsy

town

boys

they really

mess you up.

© Margaux Emmanuel

The champagne lingering in the driveway of his eyelids ransacks the minibar of his depressive tendencies. A suffering insufferable dandy with a corduroy smile spills the cough syrup on the window sill and walks through a non-smoking floor with an unlit cigarette giggling in between his teeth. The stained carpet mutters that he’s a homeless homesick and the tears sticking to the glass table know it already. So he sits back on a fatigued settee and pours himself a dubious drink with a parking lot view. So he sits back uncomfortably with his heart a little tight and he tells himself that it’s just another sick day.

sick days | © Margaux Emmanuel

Empty paving stones, tinted by loose white lace bras’ humid shadows hanging on clothesline twine, run through melancholy second hand bookshops speckled with second hand souls, mostly unshaved musicians trying to find somebody else’s life to live. A bike, chips of fern-green paint flaking off its neck, rust engulfing the bent basket at its head, makes its way through timid rays of sunlight. Adorned with a pilling yellow beanie bordering his eyebrows and an upturned leather jacket tickling his cheekbones, he somehow still feels the aching bed slats pressing into his shoulder blades, still feels the tear-coated steering wheel pressing into his arms at the grocery store parking lot.   His hollow, blistered eyes sown into a purple-skinned mysterious past would make teenage girls silently turn around with throbbing hearts in their muddy stan smiths when he biked by. He would continue to snake through the maroon bricks, not noticing, not wanting to notice. He could vaguely make out, collapsed from the lethargy of our times on a coffee shop terrace, youngsters with thick white socks hiding their calves, sipping paper cup unsugared coffee.  And he would wonder how they could be so happy, or whatever it was they were. He would slow down his pace to take a paracetamol from his pocket. He would let it sit in his mouth. He wouldn’t swallow it. It would just sit, patiently. As he would. He wanted to forget the smell of her letters. He wanted to forget his brother who died at war dishonored. He wanted to close his eyelids, sink into the deep furrows of his forehead. He wanted to feel the shotgun’s barrel pressing against his tongue. He wanted to feel a new color scheme. Until then, he would continue to bike, perhaps forever.

second-hand soul | © Margaux Emmanuel