courage (17) luz volckmann
MADAME COURAGE
Little sister walks around the neighbourhood, watched over by the sun and the bench Jesuses. The sound of a siren behind her and heads turn, their hatred ending up on the ground, conked out among the spit. Today the stones are still empty and you drag your feet along the concrete with suspicion; a pace mistrustful of the fact that putting one foot in front of the other might lead somewhere. The boulevards are now like cul-de-sacs and the only cloud in the sky is the one your lungs have spat out. To wriggle out, you’d have to run fast enough to steal all the tongues, light all the bellies’ fires, your rage nestled, hidden somewhere between the œsophages and the small intestine. But where to stage all of this? Besides, the day will always find its crime, and you will have wasted another tear on the last breaths of those you grieve.
Little sister runs along the same area and is out of breath. Lights a joint in the stairwell, one drag for each step till she reaches the dream, but even then she’ll still have to flee the nightmare. Reaches the high notes and pillages the pillow. Under the light bulb – shatter this lightbulb, shatter all the lightbulbs in all the homes that will never have enough watts to shed light on your silences – on all fours to the crapper to vomit out another hope.
Little sister keeps an eye on the night for a morning that never arrives. Oukhti!
It’s not the night you should be afraid of, it’s fear itself. Fear is eternal like God and its dreadful whispers were inscribed before the first pages of the world. That’s what it means to be wretched: hearing those whispers and not being able to make them shut up. And so the whispers become a voice. The voice becomes a cry that seeks out a body and the body will seek out others to always be bigger than big. Listen only to your legs and you will be blessed. Lay down the world and run. Run your tears and your voice, scream out your despair and your joy louder than whispers.
Little sister runs faster than the police squad and the bigots
Because she doesn’t flee
Little sister
Call yourself
Madame Courage
Luz Volckmann is a young writer living in Marseille. They describe themself as a “feminist, trans activist”. Their first novel Les Chants du placard [Songs from the Closet] came out this year with Éditions Blast.
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