Brokenuploads - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

note to self

a glimpse of melancholia

in the lukewarm saké

of a child’s laughter

© Margaux Emmanuel

visiting hours are over

a melody from western japan

    sticks to the tears you begin to cry

“visiting hours are over”

    the curtains of your heart close

you sit on the stage

    and fold

origami feelings

    delicate

intricate

    intimate

weak

now

    you can take off your mask

and let yourself hum

    quietly

nervously

    and wait

to hear the same tune

    from the audience’s side

© Margaux Emmanuel

light-headed

I know a place

where the nights are hidden under a veil of tobacco

I know a place 

where lovers wait for the rain to cease, sheltered by a stranger’s open garage

holding stolen beers and each other’s hands 

I know a place

where boys with messy hair sit on the windowsill reading Cocteau 

I know a place

where people fall in love over a cigarette and a line of Tennyson 

It’s a place 

where life isn’t so bad 

© Margaux Emmanuel 

coal

He had been working in the mines for the past three months and he was beginning to cough like the others did.

A crooked picture ornamented the otherwise bare wall. That and the piano were his only valuable possessions. He would come back home every night and see both of them, one hanging a little too much on the left, one yawning with some of its off-tune teeth missing.  There used to be a midsize mirror on the floor, its back against the wall, but as the weeks passed, as his arms and legs grew thin and as his eyes adopted a permanent look of worry, he had gotten rid of it.

Before lighting the kerosene lamp, seconds after entering through the door, he would sit down in front of the piano and would let his weakened, tired, fingers fall onto the keys. He wasn’t a very good player, he would have to pause between some of the notes in order to cough.  He played clumsy nocturnes, only alighted by the moonshine, the grime on his hands making the keys stick to his fingers. It was always quiet, the neighbors were fast asleep and he would be alone with his moon. The tears would trickle onto his cheeks, mixing with the dirt on his face, as he thought of her.

He was scared that he would forget what she looked like. He would slightly tilt his head to the left every day, but the picture was blurry and he was certain that she was prettier in real life. You couldn’t tell by looking at it that she would always say “Keep the change” at the cashier, even though they could’ve used the extra dollar for another day’s worth of soup.

“Keep the change”, he would sometimes whisper. His lips pressing against each other, his tongue touching his palate while he said those three words- it made her seem more real. It was the concrete in the abstract of sentiment, it was feeling her pulse beat against his skin.

The moon seemed far away that night. It looked as if it were crying.

© Margaux Emmanuel

tonight we’ll see the stars

“What’s his name?”

“Suzuki…Or was it Nakamura?”

Edvin didn’t say anything as he opened the matchbox that had been in his pocket and carefully plucked a match out. In an abrupt motion, he struck the match. A small flame kindled at the end of the wooden stick. He carefully observed it, letting it take his full attention as his thoughts went blank. He didn’t want to think about her. But he couldn’t control it. His eyes crawled towards hers. An uncontrollable smile formed on his face as he broke out in a nervous chuckle.

“How do you say ‘fire’ in Japanese?”, he asked, feeling the tears bordering his eyelids.

“Do I look like I fucking know?”, she answered, her voice slightly breaking on the fucking as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

She blew out the match. A small cloud of smoke slowly whirled, tinting the darkness. Edvin watched the smoke dance with the cold breeze and almost imperceptibly inhaled it.

“You’re probably tired of me”, she suddenly said.

Edvin didn’t say anything and threw the match on the cold ground with a bitter smile.

“Your eyes… they’re not quite blue are they?”, he asked avoiding to answer to what she had just said.

She turned to look at him. The only source of light being the streetlight down the street, she could only make out his silhouette.

“It’s just that, at the party, they seemed a little lighter”, he added, his voice cracking with emotion, justifying the question he had just asked.

She remembered the party. She was haunted by the smell of beer in her nostrils, by how his sweater brushed against her chin, by the foggy music’s unclear words that seeped into her skin and mind…

“No, they’re blue”, she answered, as she got up and walked away into the night.

© Margaux Emmanuel

2003

Postcards from Saigon

yellowed pictures

pants rolled up to his knees

dark ray bans

thick rims

raindrops on lips

or raindrop lips

his eyes,

a different shade of brown

those that say

“buy me a beer

before I change my mind”,

dusty eyelids

a scar

lingering

under his eye

a dog-eared book

in his hand

where he wrote in the margins

These

are

the

lines

that

prove

that

my

existence

is

a

mistake

but you only read 

the pencil prophecy

after

you had kissed him  

after

he had taken

all of those

painkillers

after

he had written that letter

saying

“I too

was once loved,

but not by you”.

© Margaux Emmanuel 2018

poisoned apricots 

under the frozen floorboards

of a sick child’s heart 

17

they were all desperate

to light your cigarette

only seventeen years old

but lips leafed in gold

I stopped believing in god

the moment I saw you,

you sepia-toned haunted ghost

you keyed the words

of your own stolen bible

on the edge of my tongue

your eyes were a pool of dusk

where I saw shadow puppets

dancing on candlelight

rose-pricked skin

and I had only ever seen

the rosy dawn

that never dared to kiss me

at the end of the night

you’d be gone in the morning,

and I’d still feel you

against my skin

as if you had been

my very own 

living nightmare

as if you had said the things

you had never thought

never said

but that I had always longed

to hear. 

the sun was poorly tuned, still glimmered in the dark so I poured him a drink; post-curfew happiness

© Margaux Emmanuel

time, show me your hand let me flirt with your cards come on, let me pick one, just one, let me be surprised let the needle of your minutes, of your aces, pierce into my skin let them be the scars of my youth from when I had receipts in my pockets from nights I never lived from when I built castles with the sand of your hour glass from when I unbricked my school with sneers of contempt from when I saw beer in the foamy shores of the Euphrates from when I wrote arbitrary letters on the lampshade dust the simmering silence until the light turned on l o o k a t t h e c l o c k [look at the clock] but the time on the clock had stopped seconds minutes hours three damoclean swords had escaped to hang above my head I used to be so young, never too old never too bold but in three million seconds you’d lay your cards on the table and show me the way out I was never a player at this game the wild shuffled heartbeat of youth was the tremor of the metronome but now now you smile and I don’t know if you’re bluffing or not so please, time, show me your hand.

never too old

kabukicho

There was a bar fight in Kabukicho, a gunshot in my ears. Loud, deafening. Empty. An actor, a haunted ghost dragged his body onto the stage, the sticky night grabbing his ankles, a hole, freshly carved out by an imaginary bullet, gaping open in his chest. He trembled as he held a glass in his hand, as if he had wanted to drink to the possible, the impossible, his winces in pain hidden by his mask. All there was was him  and the smell of stale tobacco and streaks of red delving into his cheeks. He rattled the melting ice in his glass, reflecting the 80 watt red light venom of his eyes, where silhouettes were pressed against the sliding doors of his pupils, black shadows on which he has never seen the sun rise. The amber flicker of another life replaces his agate grace with sadness, stretches out time like a loose string. He’s playing the last act, chewing on the passersby’s skin like flavorless gum.

© Margaux Emmanuel

audience participation

Last night. “A volunteer from the crowd?” murmured a croaky voice with a smile that bled through the dark. She stood up, a little too quickly, a little too ready to succumb to the sacrifice. That, she remembers. Let her smoke-filled lungs breathe under the blinding spotlight.

Now. The cherry pits leak red into the closed palms of her hands as she rattles the melting ice in her glass. An orange tree branch dipping into foamless waters, honey skin melting in the tide. She sits back onto the burnt grass, letting purple Chinese shadows dance on her closed eyelids. Time stretches out

Like

    the

      Loose

              String

of her fishnets from the night before. The same blinding light. The same vague shapeless shadows, taunting her from afar, gnawing at her bones. The same disaccord of light striping her eyes.

The stage light, the gunned golden lacquered sun of her southern childhood, was thudding against her cherry-stained, wine-stained cheeks. She opened its parlor doors and let the smoke of its colorless memories edge into her mind. Whistles in the dark. Bills itching her skin like burnt grass.

She could almost hear it again: A volunteer from the crowd? A chronic daydream that latches onto nightmares.

© Margaux Emmanuel