word.
collabs//Charles Auguste
fleurs noires
I went there myself.
I knew the time has come.
Voluntarily entering the beast's cave avoids you the role of the prey.
I didn't want to be their prey.
This was my hunt.
Men always smile so stupidly before they start undressing me.
As if someone pulls strings on the sides of their mouths.
It was an early spring morning, pearls of poisonous dew on the black flowers glistened, slowly evaporating under the sun thickening the air, making it deadly.
The way it burned made me want to peel off my skin.
His musty, light-filled room smelled of fresh coffee and cold tobacco smoke.
I hate the smell of cigarettes, sneakily slipping into my nostrils in the morning. Like a thief.
They all smoke out the window naked with a cup of coffee for some reason.
While I withhold from the thought of pushing them out that window.
Life and addictions will kill them far more exquisitely than I would.
Though I could just cling my warm skin against his trustful back and poof. —
Just the threads of smoke hanging in the dusty air.
When I came in, he was already dressed.
The window was closed.
Too late.
« Undress me. »
What a ridiculous gesture.
Why hadn't people ever invented clothes that you can step out of as gracefully as a Blue Morpho butterfly leaves its cocoon.
He jumped awkwardly and almost stumbled, pulling down his trousers.
Slammed into the wall, taking off his T-shirt.
What a dismal circus.
I always wear things that come right off easily, sliding down the skin.
With a single clasping motion.
He leered and trembled with all his milky pink skin, unable to handle the clasp.
A dismal circus it is.
My body was already poisoned by the dew of black flowers.
I'd never had a man in me before.
Strange how it affects them.
I feared he might back down.
But no, he sat on the edge of the couch, grasping for air like a fish, getting ready for the leap.
His last moments.
The venom of black flowers would strike him as soon as he penetrates my body.
Like the octopus black ink it will invade his circulatory system with a million black threads.
Sort of a mortal shibari.
He staggered ridiculously, looming over me.
A poisonous white puddle on my stomach.
He exhaled loudly and apologized.
There was no water in his den.
To wash his traces I had to pour kettle water on myself.
How stupid.
Although we'll never see each other again anyway, darling.
Black flowers don't leave a chance.
He only had time for the cigarette he'd just lit.
You know what I did with my first lover, darling?
I threw him into a ravine.
It was a birch log with a red nail polish mouth.
We kissed all summer long.
And then I threw him into the ravine.
He finally looked handsome in his deadpan serenity.
His stern and sad face, devoid of emotion, bared the beauty of his right features.
A cigarette smoldered in his lifeless hand.
Hey, darling.
There's your true face.
What a pity I have to go to school.
That sticky spot on my stomach is your last reincarnation.
you are so handsome
I wake up in your immaculate white room bathed in sunlight
and the first thing I see is the blue square of skylight above my head
where from time to time lazy clouds valiantly pass by
it seems that there is no earth below us
and that all this space hovers in a serene infinity of blue
and you are so handsome in it
your arm escapes from the blanket
naive
motionless
devoid of will
like a puppet
it is crowned by the perfect roundness of an already lightly tanned shoulder
that follows the fine line of the neck towards that nape
shorn and so vulnerable
you are so handsome
your skin shines with olive gold of the May sun
I have an unendurable desire to nestle my lips in it
my whole being
to nestle in it
to drink its marvelous morning scent
to melt into its voluptuousness
to wake you up with my thirst
to drive you as mad as I am now
admiring your painfully perfect features
but you are sleeping
you're not interested
never was
so I lie there
a motionless onlooker
watching the clouds in the blue square
…
broken raspberries pt I
expo//Alisa Safina
night creeps into the apartment through the black hole of the window
at the entrance I gaze at my reflection in the mirror
overwhelming and intrusive,
the artificial light sticks every detail to the eyes
makes it painfully tangible
one step towards the mirror
one step back
Who is that in the blue floral dress staring back at me?
This dress is my favorite.
A piece of sky I wrap myself in.
Wearing it makes me feel special.
Two little braids.
Neat. Adorable. I like them a lot, but it's not enough...
Mother! Mother, why do I have such ordinary ears?
How happy I would be if they were like this, big and sticking out!
And if you think at the top of your brains "I love you" next to her, would she feel it ?
I'm fourteen and I love her so much !
The words are drowning in tenderness and trouble.
I can’t, it's unbearable, I can't !
I look at her and it’s irresistible.
How do I get to her ? stamp her under my skin ? absorb her with my eyes ?
I'll guard the delicate lines of your face.
Growing up as a kid I didn't have a dressing gown.
Neither did my mother.
And I didn't have a father either.
When at a friend’s place I see someone's dad walk out in a cozy beautiful dressing gown my heart skips a bit and melts simultaneously from someone else's happiness.
Dressing gowns aren't worn in all kinds of houses.
So I fantasize a house where everyone walks around in their gowns as they please. This luxury.
Me, I am stuck with my mother and my dreams.
And with this weird, disobedient body.
I don't know yet if I'll grow up to be a man or a woman.
Should I make a choice ? I need more time, need to hide from all the tumult ! So I put on my dressing gown. It shields me from prying looks.
It doesn't need my choice. I feel warm.
.... in this movement the portraits remain on the backs of these people As they dissolve into the crowd
move on to their elsewhere
And you to your elsewhere
The sweet irony is that they wear these portraits on their backs
so to see them they need to undress
to get intimate with themselves
Just the air between skin and naked cloth
...
through your valley from toes to forehead on your intimate
I leave the blueprint
of mine
"Windmills"//Maël Le Gall
So… what are you looking at?
Did you think we won't notice you?
Neither me, nor this forest?
Our silent conversation has been rumbling at least since I was born.
And from what I know, long before.
Here, all things vibrate. Things breathe, dilate, merge. Everything lives. Burns, rots, alters.
And in the middle of this your apnea appears more clamorous and troubling than nocturnal cries of a hungry tawny owl.
It's the strangest thing though... you're here, among us, yet you can't be approached.
Weird, isn’t it ? I know, don't tell anything, you didn't choose any of this.
Neither your supervising stance, nor your loneliness, nor this screaming perpendicularity.
I do wonder if they put in cage you or all of us. Who's being guarded from whom ?
You're silent... But I got used to it. Yes, yes. It’s very often that our eyes meet.
You thought I couldn’t see you through the branches ?
They’ve enthroned you, but you’re no blue blood, are you.
More like this beanpole classmate who grew tall over one summer.
Awkward feeling...
And it’s not like you could go away either.
How to find out what kind of world they erected you in ?
Although I’ve learned your secret. Your blades absorb everything the wind carries through the earth.
You let it wash over you and send it on. That’s how you live.
So I’ve got another one for you, here.
Send me out into the wind.
"Party"//DO.KRE.I.S magazine
Party suddenly woke up...
She couldn't feel her heartbeat and didn't know where she was.
Drinking lukewarm beer from a random open bottle grabbed from a field of these on a table, she couldn't seem to shake off the shackles of drunkenness, the drowsy paralysis of alcohol.
Misty-eyed Party searches for a goal, something, some meaning to cling to in this stuffy room filled with smoke.
Who summoned her this time?
She walks up to two barely dressed girls and pours the rest of her beer over their heads. They laugh mechanically and without enthusiasm, throwing their arms in the air.
No, it’s not it.
She heads for the bathroom where, squirming in the spill of beer and broken glass, a couple is making out languorously. Fine ribbons of blood from the cuts make their way into pools of alcohol... So odd, Party thinks, blood in alcohol. Usually it’s the other way around. She stares at the dance of intermingling liquids, and begins to fall back into this trance. Stop! She has got to keep looking.
All of a sudden there’s a heavy weight of something warm and sticky on her already tired shoulders. A bare-chested young man slumps onto her back, shouts something unintelligible and shoves a shot of red liquid into her hand. A vampire? So that would be the blood of those two in the bathroom? The thought repulses Party, it brings vertigo. Gathering last bits of strength, she frees herself from the sweaty embrace and moves forward, shaking her head. But the fog that imprisoned her mind just won’t go.
Why is she here after all?
She must find out before falling back into the abyss of unconsciousness.
Limping, she bumps into a giant couch, hits the armrest, loses her balance and falls into the soft velvet of cushions. Two arms reach out of nowhere and find her. Spider-fingers frantically probe her shoulders, her head, and having found the back of her neck join and clutch into a solid lock. A sweet and sour odor hits Party's nose, preceding the appearance of a perfectly round weary head, covered in smudged mascara and glitter. The head immediately clings its face against Party’s mouth, its tongue slipping between her soft lips and forcefully invading her. The head's nostrils inhale noisily, the grip of its hands is firm. Astonishing for such a weak looking creature. With superhuman effort, braving the nausea, Party manages to peel the head off her face. The traits of the head are indistinct, almost erased. It opens its teary glazed eyes and exhales sensually: "Please, love me...".
Exhausted Party drips from the sofa to the floor only to discover a white cat quietly grooming itself, right in the middle of all the idle feet. The cat grants her with a disdainful look before leaving to run its cat errands.
Party is completely devoid of energy.
She craves oxygen.
She needs oxygen immediately, otherwise it's back to darkness, back to insanity.
Besides, who knows what they'll do with her lifeless body?
She doesn’t recognize anyone in this room.
Party crawls and crawls through people's feet and bar stools, through beer caps and cigarette butts, following a trickle of fresh air almost blindly, sensing how strength leaks out of her body with every exhale. Reaching forward with her arms, Party instinctively pushes away the obstacles that separate her from the outside world, and leaping in one last rush, pulls herself out of the walls.
Her lungs stained with tar and dust, swell her chest like frigate sails.
Why was she invited to this place?
And above all, by whom?
Feverish Party drags her body through the city pregnant of dawn. She tries to find a memory, a last bit of clear mind, anything sensible. A purpose. Her etiolated brain doesn't respond.
For how many days has Party already been stuck in the smog of noisy basements?
A week? Two? A year?
For how many years has she been peacocking in front of glittering zombies?
For how many years has her body been taking in various poisons?
Party is instantly seized by shivers of dread, she has to see her reflection. She stops in front of a window and peers her withered eyes into it. Come on, focus…
…A bizarre, crooked ghost in rags observed Party from the other side. The ghost staggered and trembled. Its hollow dull features expressed misery, and instead of eyes were two black pits where pupils quivered like buoys in a half-drained lake. Party recoiled in horror.
Away.
Away, away, away from here, far away.
What was she waiting for all this time?
That they'd start burning winter effigies again?
That they’d dance in circles and celebrate the autumn harvest?
It’s long gone.
She couldn't remember exactly when the fog of dementia crept into her mind, through what rift, how it all began, but it was as if it became harder and harder for her to understand why she was being invited.
At first, it was about wild animals captured by men, about lightning strike bringing fire, about victories in wars, arrivals of spring: whole peoples praised the heavens in unison for the blessings sent, they sang, danced together. As time went by the number of people diminished, but the celebrations became much more lavish - in luxurious interiors, Party belonged to a handful of people, those who dwelled in palaces and castles. The finesse of the decorations took her breath away every time. Although at times Party felt completely out of place, she didn't dare question such influential people, contenting herself with the pomp of the ceremonies, exquisite outfits they dressed her with and royal walks through gilded halls and staircases.
Party got invited to the table and took a liking to the drink. Ceremonies no longer enchanted her as they once had, especially as they grew more and more scarce. From then on, Party went about festivities without her luxurious attire: whether it was noisy and smelly port fishmongers at the pub after a fine day's sales, or crisp bankers in starched white shirts clicking ice cubes in their whisky glasses, Party was all the rage. Finely perfumed women in silk dresses uncorking a bottle of champagne, teenagers playing guitar badly between sips of cheap beer in a muddy courtyard, old couples at the beach with fruit baskets and jugs of sangria - everyone wanted to see Party and she was there for everyone.
People loved Party so much that they devoted the night to her and began erecting temples to her in big cities - those were temples without windows, where music played loudly and incessantly, dimmed lights flickered and special potions were offered to keep the night going. People couldn't get enough of Party, and whenever they left the temples, they’d take her into their homes. Ambitious and sybaritic, Party reigned every night, night turning into morning, morning into evening and so on, to the frenzied rhythm of music, a glass in hand, Party never stopped. As time went by, her own presence inspired less and less excitement, but that no longer mattered to Party for she rushed headlong to join in her latest craze of addictions.
Wine and potions became the reason to her life.
She must leave.
Away from here. Far away.
Party runs, runs, no longer feeling the ground beneath her feet, flies like a tornado, losing her rags in the wind. And the more she runs, the stronger and more powerful is her breath, the more true is her step. Finally, Party runs so fast that she spreads out her arms and soars like an eagle above the ground, the pulse resonating throughout her entire being. Mile after mile as the city fades away the luscious green of woods grows bigger and wilder beneath Party’s wings.
She knows what she must do.
In the dizzying heights, she perceives the first rays of the coming day. « It's time. » Party glances one last time upon the feeble yellow patch of the city, fills her lungs with air and, launching like an arrow, shatters herself on the ground into myriads of dew diamonds on leaves and petals.
The day licked the woods with the first timid tongue of light and got tangled in herbs, setting the dew ablaze with rainbow colors.
Bees and butterflies still half asleep, alighted on the flowers, stretched their wings in the sun and snuggled up to the dew drops to quench their thirst.
Party was home.