Thirty Percent Off

thirty percent off

You should go inside

You should see all the pretty girls

You should’ve seen this one, oh boy her-

No thanks,

I just came here for the view

but the percent

wept

sang

in his smile

and betrayed

the slang and meth

hanging in his mouth

the poor lighting

the off-key voice crack karaoke

the interrupted sentences.

Quarter to three am

unfamiliar sheets

biting

married men’s skin

dampened by the nightlight

the droopy eyes

hell’s sigh

the sunlight inching

through the curtains

counter-clockwise

pushed

through the streets

of dawn

neon shards

of billboards

promoting their lives

unnamed bodies

still warm

still moaning

by their side

an ache

an itch

in their thighs

they stain

the pavement

with their silent cries

Is this what it’s like

to be dead,

or are we alive?

hitches a ride

into their minds

they still have

pictures of their kids

in their wallets

along with a string

of unattached numbers

for the occasional hunger

oh, no

they were

thirty percent off

I would’ve never

sunbaked hearts

fall apart

a la carte

but oh,

it doesn’t matter

as long as it stays

in the dark.

© Margaux Emmanuel

the drinks are on me

Past midnight, at a rusty bar, a young man conversing the outcome of a wrestling match. Quite charming, really: three shirt buttons undone, smooth grin of “the drinks are on me”. I heard the conversation make some turns, some more abrupt than others. The more drinks hit the counter, the more his words left tire tracks. He was soon boasting his fine palate for Japanese whiskey and saying “I saw scenery of the sort in Kyoto back in 2004”, “Hey Jim, here’s a quarter, go play me a song on the jukebox will ya”. 

He was in the booth in front of me, but I couldn’t see his face; I only caught a glimpse of his slicked-back brown hair. Maybe I had one or two, two or three drinks myself. Maybe it was a little too dark. I didn’t usually go to bars back then. 

“Wait, play that again, I’ve heard the tune before, just don’t quite remember from where”. 

A waitress, still bearing the traits of adolescence but old enough to look at you straight in the eye, came around. 

“Most people call me Connor. But you don’t look like ‘most people’. So call me whatever you want, it’ll do.” 

Connor. The way he pronounced his name, revealing his Boston accent, still rings in my ears. I still mouth it to this very day, letting my jaw slightly drop and my tongue press against the back of my lower teeth, just to make me remember that, despite the drunken haze the moment was soaked in, it was not a dream. It was something concrete in the stupor of it all. 

Soon enough, they were all loudly singing, their arms enlaced around their necks, swaying back and forth, tears swelling in their eyes. I watched, amused, possibly sipping the foam of yet another beer. 

And that’s when everything started to slow down. I laid my head against the wooden panel on my left side and let my heavy eyelids close. 

“We’re closing”; I was awoken, dazed, from the deep trance of a dreamless sleep. 

The bar was empty: only the manager, a heavily-built middle-aged man with tattoos covering his neck was standing right in front of me, slightly frowning. 

I rose from my seat, silent from the grogginess. As I was about to make my way out of the booth, I noticed a piece of paper, on the table, in the corner of my eye. Unsure if it was mine or not, I grabbed it and shoved it in my back pocket. 

I took the bus home but got off one stop too early. I stumbled my way through the streets, occasionally letting out a chuckle for no particular reason. The streets were bare; the town was dead. Ten minutes later, after fumbling with the keys and crawling in the stairs, I fell, fully clothed, onto my bed and fell back asleep.  

It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I was sitting down, my hand laying on the countertop, watching the coffee slowly drip, every drop tolling in my head. The piece of paper that I had taken the night before was in my right hand; it was a phone number. 

7911-75246 written in slanted black ink.

I grabbed my phone, turning it in my right hand indecisively. A few minutes later, the number was dialled; here we go again.

© Margaux Emmanuel

He stares at the ceiling, a scratched melody bleeding through the thin wall. To his right, the wall was unadorned, in an almost naked, dehumanized manner. A lonely flower was limply standing in a vase, giving him big gloomy eyes, sitting on a small table. The porridge sticks to the spoon that he brings to his mouth. “Mr. Rodler, I will come back to give you your medication in half an hour” The white sheets are stiff against his goosebumped legs, he runs his hand on them, trying to decrease them, pressing his palms against his thighs’ skin. Weekend in a whirlwind weekend in a whirlwind weekend in a whirlwind “Weekend in a whirlwind!” “Mr. Rodler, I beg your pardon?” He bites his lip as the woman takes a last glance at him as she leaves the room. He rubs the back of his left hand against his lips, smudging the porridge bordering his lips onto his hand. He takes, or rather he grips, the spoon and circles it around the ridge of the empty bowl, letting the utensil schizophrenically scratch and screech against the bowl’s metal. He finally takes the bowl, rises it with both hands to his eyes’ level, and looks at his reflection. “Weekend in a whirlwind”. The nurse enters the room once again with a glass of water in her hand and a small tray in the other. “Can he play something else? I don’t enjoy ragtime.” “Mr. Rodler, what are you talking about? No music is playing.” He nervously turns to the left wall as puts his hands onto his ears. The white nurse stares at him with a composed incomprehension. “Why don’t you play some chess? Mr. Saito would, I bet, love to play against you.” “I don’t want him to know what I’m thinking.” “But, Mr. Rodler, it’s just a game.” He vigorously shakes his head as he nervously tugs on the sheets that were tightly held back by the sides of the mattress. “Don’t look at me that way, I beg you.” “Mr. Rodler, do I need to bring you to the upstairs ward?” He stays silent because he knows very well what goes on in “the upstairs ward”. He looks at the nurse and hisses: “Weekend in a whirlwind”.

weekend in a whirlwind | © Margaux Emmanuel

amber & hyacinths

The birthday card was slightly slanted. The front was a clumsy neon yellow with the words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” written in multi-color capital letters. One of those cone-shaped birthday hats sat on the “B”.

In the shower, she would sometimes press a little stronger against razor blade, letting it delicately and, at first, painlessly, cut into her skin. She would just sit in the shower, letting the toast grow cold, blood trickling along her leg. A spider would creep along the steamy mirror, running across the soft blurry colors of her skin, as if it were ashamed to see her naked.

Her small breasts rubbed against her tight shirt.

She would open the fridge, only to be confronted with a four-day salad and an empty jar of jam. The kitchen countertop was sticky with filth, weeks worth of dishes were piled, a spoon sadly laying on a bowl’s sides, dipping in moldy milk, a fork still sticking in a store-bought quiche, a bottle of vodka stood, open, a never-ending source, empty ones were on the floor.

“Doing that will only make things worse”. That’s what the doctor would have said. 

“Fucking moron”, she muttered to herself. 

She sat down on the kitchen floor and lit a cigarette. She remembered a conversation she had at the port a few weeks, days or years ago with him. Not the doctor him, the other him. 

“Those things will kill you.”

“You eventually will anyway.”

She laughed by herself, inhaling a puff of smoke. That’s when he had given her the week late birthday card. She never kept birthday cards but his was wedged into the windowsill. It was difficult to believe that he would never write another birthday card for her again.

A tightness crawled into her chest, she felt it even in her yellowed fingertips. His name came into mind. Doctor Alban had said that she should get rid of the card.

“Did you ever desire her?”

“I think so”, he said, his stern tobacco-colored eyes were darkened by the night.  He was stretched on the bed, his bony ribs creating a bowl of darkened moonlight.

“As a memento mori, perhaps”

“She must’ve been beautiful”

I perceived his nodding in the dark. He stayed silent while staring at the ceiling.

“Very”, he finally said.

She knew that he still loved her.

The faucet was running. Maybe it had been running the whole time. Probably.

She got up to close it, her long, untidy nails uncomfortably enclosing around it. The metal left a cold impression onto her hand. She remembered.

His eyes weren’t brown. They didn’t deserve to have a color. They were all the crumpled paper poems, they were all that she had searched for in vain during her entire life without exactly knowing what. They were the sneers of incomprehension, they were an abandoned shivering cold desire, sticky with the poison of indifference. They were a neon yellow happy birthday card, with one of those cone-shaped birthday hats on the “B”.

© Margaux Emmanuel

The way your eyes would bite my neck during the cigarette break when there was nothing between us and the moon except for the smell of stale tobacco.

© Margaux Emmanuel 

“What do they call you?” He let the crickets answer for him, continuing to stare into the bonfire crackling in front of them, his arms extended perpendicularly against his thighs, palms pressing against the burnt grass, and puffing out his grimy bare chest. His cornflower eyes, where orange flames flickered in the night, were framed by his short brown hair and a finely chiseled nose. His thin lips rarely moved and if they did, they only trembled. Suddenly, he turned to his side, his skin rustling against the rigid grass, and grabbed a light green soda can out of a wooden crate. He handed it to her, letting his eyes meet hers for the first time. “Thank you”, she whispered with a small smile. She had been eyeing the sodas for the entire time, longing for the sweet liquid to trickle down her throat cracked with thirst. She lifted the soda tab and let it hiss. As she passed the can to her right hand, she noticed that red ink was smeared on her left hand. She looked at the side of the can and noticed the familiar red stamp. “So you were in the hangar?” He raised his glance back towards her and let his head settle at her level before giving a small nod. “You could’ve died”, she said. His gaze was once again lost in the fire. As she lifted her chin towards the dark sky to let the prickly drink pour into her throat in one longing gulp, she heard, in a velvet voice splintered with sadness: “And many of us did”. Her neck went erect in surprise, leaving some clumsy soda trickling down her chin. She gaped at him, astonished. Pushing against the ground with fatigue, he got up with a slight stagger. “We should get going, the sun will be up in a couple of hours”, he said, his eyes looking towards the east. “Ye-yes, you’re right”, she answered, her drowsy mind awakened by all the questions she wanted to ask him. His skinny arms lifted the two crates of provisions, making him wince in pain. “Do you need help with that?” He replied with a scowl, making her blush. “Let us go” They left the flames weaken. The morning sun would shine onto the ashes of the night that had reigned beforehand, and they would be gone.

of war and silence | © Margaux Emmanuel