The Champagne Lingering In The Driveway Of His Eyelids Ransacks The Minibarof Hisdepressive Tendencies.

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

sandpaper

Lining up

empty

soft drink

bottles

on the

windowsill

of a

dented heart

peering at

the streets

of silence

discolored

by daylight

you remember

a checkered

red and white

picnic cloth

flattened

burnt

grass

screeching

underneath

an orange tree branch

dipping in

a timid

foamless

ocean

sky

his honey skin

melting in the tide

pruney words

kisses

a chronic daydream

he never

draws hearts

with sidewalk chalk

but his initials

are sown

into the collar

of your reverie

you’re the 

dissociative

teenager

that can’t help

but miss him so.

© Margaux Emmanuel

The diagonal scar swelling  on his cheek shadows the stalemate  of salvation  a glissando  of desire that flew west for the winter away from the tempered light of day. The anacoluthon  of love  trapped in the pillowcase feathers of the  "have you ever been hurt ?" speaks  the demotic language of the pinned knight on the chessboard  of neurasthenia.  His heart writes letters with no  return address  My heart is trembling  with haste. "Nunc scio quid sit amor."

la llovizna comprende | © Margaux Emmanuel

bath drain

Nine o’clock bath

and I run

my fingers

on the steam’s

ashes

on the mirror

revealing

your

unvaccinated

velvet

daydreams.

My knees

glance out at

unsigned checks

stolen aspirin

spoiled milk

her lipstick’s shards

in your cheeks.

My skin skims

unsent postcards

one-way tickets

to the depths

of your mind

but I missed the flight

every time

I will continue to stare

at the sad

air vents

the antiseptic.

I will continue

to cut my hair

until I won’t feel

your fingertips

knocking

at the auburn 

curls

at the door

of the past

so

do your

lips 

do receipts?

© 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

painkiller

You drink pain from the bottle. The shower-head cries, and I sink into the half-hearted water while sinking into the wine-stained corners of your lips, and I wonder if falling out of love is not remembering the way your pale, wet, eyes would pronounce my name, not remembering the way the water rings of your bedside table would yawn for help. Sunken blister packs with your name stuck in the cardboard package bleed through heavy nights, the ink sifting into the floorboards gasping for air. In the wrinkles of the wood, I tried to paint the bullets of the human heart, but that candlelit smirk cannot be trapped in acrylic. You are an opaque sensation, a splintered heart.

© Margaux Emmanuel