Re-bumbleblossoms - Tumblr Posts

you missed the nine o’clock train

You wear

silence’s

jacket

and the acne

that creeps down

the shadows

of your neck

scribbles down

your screams

on the back

of a crumpled napkin

that you always keep

in your back left

pocket.

You are soaked in

faltering voices

yet you are

the flower

growing

in the washed-out

asylum of humanity

and I am in

desperate need

of your fragrance.

I thought

that I had caught

a glimpse of you

arms crossed

wondering down

the hallway

of unsaid nostalgia

perhaps chewing some skin

off your lower lip

perhaps a tear

or two

polishing the floor

under your feet.

But you always come

twenty minutes late

to the suburbs

of my emotions

so you saw me

and kept walking.

A new chapter

but

the ink

from

the last one

always

bleeds

through.  

© 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

close the door on your way out

At night, her grey eyes faintly glistening in the light of a row of lampposts, she stood in the shadow of a suburban cul-de-sac front porch. She mouthed with a grin, in the language of cigarette smoke, the words he would pronounce, his back resting upon an orange steel locker. She’d usually roll her eyes and answer:

Well, that’s very nice. Now, be a dear and close the door on your way out.

She chuckled thinking about it. He didn’t know that, afterwards, she’d lock herself in the bathroom stall, the no man’s land where the wandering soldiers, enslaved by dreams with no perspective would carve the truth with their bitten bitter tongues. And oh boy the profanity. She’d sympathize with the blistering paint of sin while running her fingers over the walls’ scars and tattoos, let their meaning soak her fingertips. She liked it. But did she understand it? She once saw:

If only we could all love.

This sentence creeped back to her with the small-town breeze, seeping into her skin. She put out her cigarette against the shadowed brick wall and sat back on the patio chair. She noticed how rusty the metal was. Maybe it had always been that way.

She wanted to write a play. Not a famous one that would make the Hollywood actors drool, but one of those eighty-cents coffee stained and dog-eared garage sale plays that you’d buy out of pity and out of a tingling curiosity for the literary pariahs. The sort that receives a scattered applause, the actors timidly bowing in response. But it would be about the caesuras of the heartbeat of this town. It would be about the dark blue teenage dreams.

Her eyes wondered to the cigarette ashes laying on the floor, intently staring at her. She smiled in approval to her thoughts, got up, and went back in.

© Margaux Emmanuel

a dreamlike love bite

Two songs

away from you

having lunch

by the car

I close my eyes

memories

of kissing pretty neighbors

in their treehouses

paint dripping

down the easel

of the night

all I wanted

was for love

to bite

and now

you’re smiling

by my side

I guess

I’ll rob the sky of tonight’s stars

for you

but once my eyelids open

I’m still a lovesick kid

in an empty parking lot

and the stars always find

a place to hide.

© 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

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 

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

women in love

Your face clouds over

when the picture

of the girl

with the red

octagonal

sunglasses

red cheeks

from having recently cried

leaning

on your car

falls out of your wallet

only to remind you

in the sotto voce

of memory

that she kept your

love letters

in a battered copy

of Women in love.

You wonder

if she kept it

she always said

that it was a mistake

to reread the novels

of your youth

Oh, she was a hesitation

You remember

every rhyme

every bite

of the poems

that she wrote

on your lips

for she always said

that you only know

what you feel

once it’s been written.

She was damnation

You remember

seeing the

ink stains

sprawled on the cover

of her

DH Lawrence

in the hands

of someone else

at that

end of the year

garage sale

he was laughing

chewing

his cheeks

but the book

isn’t funny

maybe he was laughing

at your poems

he was laughing

because he doesn’t love her

and he never will

maybe he was laughing

because you are trapped

in those pages

you still live

every curve

every sharpness

of her letters

and she now lives

in the verse of another

he wasn’t laughing.

© Margaux Emmanuel 

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

haiku

eyes of dented ink; 

summer liquor store color 

crawl into this bed 

© 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 

It’s 12 am and teenagers are sitting down, cross-legged, in a fast-food’s parking lot, some loosely holding a crestfallen cigarette in their right hands, its embers lightly glowing in the darkness, some staring at the cars passing by. They’re playing some obscure artist’s b-sides on a beat down stereo that they all seem to be sitting around. “I’m going inside; so fucking cold out here. You guys want anything to eat? Daniel gave me a coupon for their sodas”, says a boy with piercing grey eyes as he rouses himself, long dyed-black hair peaking out from his over-sized sweatshirt’s hood. “I think we’re good”, replies a red-haired girl, almost mechanically, almost as if she is somehow not allowed to want anything, as she lies back and stares into the starless sky with an empty expression. Another girl in the group, chattering teeth and hugging her knees that she has covered with her large green knitted sweater, is aligning dominos on the smooth cement. “What are you doing?”, asks a boy, his veins visibly snaking under his pale skin and his eyes hidden behind strands of brown curls. “This…is us”, she answers while pushing the first domino and watching them fall, one by one onto one another until the very last one drops down and they are all lying there, inanimate, almost breathless. “The fuck are you rambling on about”, he sharply rejoins. “She’s saying that if it weren’t for Lawrence we wouldn’t be in this shithole”, suddenly says the red-haired girl, a little too loudly, as she sits up to face the other members of the group. “Shut your trap”, whispers the boy in a foggy breath as he nervously turns his head to make sure that Lawrence isn’t in sight. “Don’t you tell me that it’s not true, Anzu will tell you the same”, she continues but now in a lower voice and slightly turning herself towards Anzu, awaiting a response while bitterly putting out her cigarette against the asphalt. “Kat’s right…”, says Anzu under her breath with composure. The boy doesn’t say anything, perhaps because he knew that his friends were right but it hurt too much to acknowledge it. He moves the hair that was covering his eyes and places them behind his ear, revealing mellow cedar eyes that betray his cold demeanor. He peers at the dominos, almost frightened by them. Suddenly, he reaches towards the stereo and turns it off in the middle of “hear what I say and tell me if you still-”. Katherine and Anzu look at him, gaping. “Let’s go”, he says as he gets up and grabs the stereo. The girls remain where they are, puzzled. “Ernest, are you fucking out of your mind? We’re in the middle of nowhere and Lawrence has the car keys”, says Katherine with an anxious chuckle. Ernest begins to make his way across the parking lot, holding the stereo in one hand and putting his other hand into his hoodie’s pocket, ignoring Katherine’s indignant remark. “Ernest!”, screams Katherine as the washed-out boy’s figure progressively blends into the dark horizon. Anzu calmly lights a cigarette as Katherine arises and begins to desperately run after him. “What’s going on?”, says a voice from behind. Anzu turns around and sees Lawrence, insouciantly biting into a hamburger that he holds with his two hands, ketchup dripping onto them. “You really don’t understand, do you?”, she mutters into her green sweater as she watches Katherine and Anzu from afar. “Anzu, what are they-“ “Lawrence, it’s freezing, we’re far from home and we haven’t slept in days, this had to happen at some point.” “You can’t possibly think that this is all my fault!” “That’s not what I said.” “But you seem to think so.” Anzu doesn’t dare to look at Lawrence, maybe because the way that he would look at her would bring back more painful memories. She sniffles. “Are you crying?” “No, I’m just fucking cold”, she says as she rubs her sleeve against her teary eyes, gets up, and leaves Lawrence alone in the icy parking lot. He looks at the dominos laying on the floor and then, almost as a reflex, bends down and grabs them. As he turns the hard rectangles in his hands, he thinks  to himself that nothing can be done.

dominos | © Margaux Emmanuel 

wake up

you write

        arbitrary letters

                           on the lampshade dust

a game

        of mental scrabble,

modernity’s

           aphasia

the light turns on

v

u

  l

   n

     e

       r

        a

          b

            l

              e

you are in bed

writing

          what you think,

letting your skin

                  nervously flirt

                                      with unfamiliar sheets,

letting your pen 

                      nervously flirt

                                       with innocent paper,

meeting

            your pale lover’s

                                weak eyes

                                            for the first time:

we all need

           to meet

                   ourselves.

© 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

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