Sandpaper

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

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 

bullet eclipse

an asylum for doubt

a saturated drought 

where your eyes spiral down

my arteries

unspoken words amble upon a shard 

of reason

of treason 

inoculation

against melancholia

palpitations

holding hands with dementia

I can now hear 

the moans of hysteria

 © 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

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