The Way Your Eyes Would Bite My Neckduring The Cigarette Breakwhen There Was Nothing Between Us And The

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 

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

She rubbed her hand against her nose, smudging the blood still trickling out of her nostrils onto her index finger and cupid’s bow. She could still feel the outline of his knuckles pressing against her gum. They had left a fresh bruise on her lower cheek and her lip plump in its swollenness. Stiff from pain, she pressed her still moist palms, striped pink from the tight hand wraps, onto the parking lot concrete with a slight wince and attempted to straighten her back. She grabbed the icepack that she had angrily thrown to the floor, tears dripping out of its side from a rip in the blood-stained plastic, and despite the layer of sticky dirt thinly covering it, carelessly slapped it onto her face, her hunger for the cold solace betraying the hot rancour in her eyes. “All I did was make a fool of myself”, she thought as her eyes now woefully crawled towards the gloves, peaking out of a black-cloth gym bag, the ensanguined white flag shining from the timid light of a nearby lamppost. She laid her right hand onto her stomach, slightly discerning her drained muscles through the sticky shirt. Not a soul was in sight at this hour. She even leaned her ear onto the cement, awaiting the low grumble of some distant car, only to be confronted with a bitter silence. She was eventually lying on her side in the middle of the empty parking lot, the breeze leaving a cool impression on her humid hair, as her fingers danced, almost detached from her body, on a worn white line that had been painted onto the cement long ago. The blood from her nose slowed to a sideward drip. Her mind was elsewhere; she wallowed in the mud of her thoughts as she attempted to recall the intricacies of his face, a temptation that she could not resist. When she began to remember the rugged slit in his eyebrow and the grin of his pale green eyes, a violent nausea threatened her throat. She was on her knees, her arms pressed against the cold ground as she dryly coughed. “I need to get up”, she muttered to herself. She pushed herself up with the remaining strength in her muscles and arose with a tired lurch. She noticed a gas station sign, blinking red, bleeding into the blurred serenity of the night, floating in the darkness. She grabbed her bag and her leather gloves and, puffing her chest out, made her way into the moonless night.

fight | © 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 

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. 

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