From That Angle, The Beer Bottle Glimmered In Its Green Light. She Was Shaking As She Was On The Floor,

From that angle, the beer bottle glimmered in its green light. She was shaking as she was on the floor, desperately seeking comfort in rubbing her finger against the bottle's rim.  "For... fuck's... sake!", she yelled, letting the back of her throat burn and slamming her fist against the wooden floor, its surface dampened by tears. She took a stressful sip of beer, hoping it would soothe her strained throat and she let out a nervous, almost maniacal chuckle. She tightly held her knees against her breasts, muttering, out of breath,  "I wasn't supposed to know, I wasn't supposed to know, I wasn't supposed to-", her sentence interrupted by a forceful sob. She dug her face into her arms, her skin sticky from tears.  "Fuck...you", she whispered into her arms. "Fuck you!", she screamed, at nobody, at everybody, lifting her head to violently bang it against the wall supporting her back, a delicious spasm of pain massaging her skull at every thud. "You...promised", she said softly in a tired voice cracked by the violence of her sadness.  She had a sudden desire to throw the glass bottle that she had been holding in her hand, to hear it, watch it, shatter into pieces. Oh, how it would send a second of euphoria down her spine, but she was too weak; she let the bottle drunkenly roll out of her hands and onto the floor, out of her reach. She wouldn't dare to let her eyes rest for the image would tint the darkness of her eyelids.  She grabbed her phone, dialed the only number that she knew by heart.  "179-789-280", she chanted with a little laugh.    "Alex" "Yes" "I thought that you had... like blocked my number", she said, getting up to grab the bottle. She brought it to her bitter lips even though it was empty. She blew into it.  "How many? "How many what?" "Bottles have you had" "Come on Alex...Doesn't matter...I'm calling you because he of course didn't fucking stop" "It would’ve been more of a surprise if you said that he had" He was driving; she could tell by the nonchalance and calmness in the tone of his voice and by the impatience of every single one of his replies, as if he wasn't really paying attention, as if he had been in this situation much too many times before and he was now replying with coldness to the habitual.  "He... had promised", she said as she felt the fingers of emotion enlace around her throat. “What do you want me to do?” “Alex, you knew him better than any-“ “I’m sorry, I just can’t. I'm not some hotline” “Don’t say that to me you fucking little bastard” She heard the car door slam, a caesura in the conversation. “Well, you want people to be honest with you and I’ll tell you right now that I can’t deal with this, okay? Before taking care of him, take care of yourself; you sound pretty fucked up yourself.” She heard the sound of the sole of his shoes hit the cement. He probably wore expensive black ones, polished until some kid’s hands ached. She hesitated; they both knew very well which gun she was about to fire. “Okay,” she said meekly.  “but you know very well what happened to Raymond. Lost some sleep there, didn’t you?” Oh, she knew how to hit a nerve. The rhythmic click clack of his leather shoes abruptly stopped.  She could hear the quiver of his breath translating the pain inching onto him as she pronounced those words. “Listen here Quinn, I-“ “You know where to find him”. She hung up. She had said enough.

179-789-280 |  © Margaux Emmanuel 

Ill-chosen metaphors towel my body dry inch towards the word toying with the tip of my tongue you know the word the one eyeing the dark corners of the after party of infatuation the one stinging in the touch of bare-knuckled motorists pretending to be in trouble in the implied sensuality of those haunted eyes I said no peeking you already know the word oh I’m not trying to stop you, love all of these untalented talented teens know exactly what they want now turn off the radio whisper it in your licorice breath I’ll just be here falling asleep in the arms of dawn waiting.

don’t look at me like that, help me find this word | © 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

bittersweet

Swirling in the ashes of honey, I awake crying under a bridge. A blur of roses forcefully blooms in my lips letting faraway delusions plague me in the twilight. When the crepuscule flees while passionately kissing the horizon, when there is nothing to write, nothing right and nothing to feel, where do the lonely petals of sentiment go? The scream of silence reigns, misunderstood. My reflection in a tearful cup of tea has suddenly dulled reality.

© 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

In the remainder of the tepid alcohol languishing in the flask of your eyes, we drink to the lost silhouette of love, burn our photographs wedged into the yellowed corners of our thoughts. We settle for cemented happiness, contemplating life through its glass corridors where mold is hidden, where I can feel the cracks of our suffering, where I can sense our hands dismembering our own poetry. When empty phrases harrow insomnia, I tape blossoms, breaths of life, to the pages of our unfinished chapters. But the trees’ barks where our initials dangle, imprisoned by a blistering heart, are peeling. I have just realized that flowers wither.

to slip on drunken petals 

© Margaux Emmanuel