It's Still Life

Passport Interrogation

Part 1, Calais, 12 November 1830

The paddle-wheeler pitched us into France; the quay fatigued by tides, received us without welcome, smelling of coal and old salt.

Under a dripping lamp the policeman collected our passports like birds he meant to keep, and we surrendered them as one surrenders breath to winter.

Felreil, my black-coated weather, stood taller than patience, as if a stranger’s ink could not be allowed to mark him twice—foreign ink a theft he would permit only once.

I counted my answers into his narrow ledger, my voice the smallest currency: yes to the town; sponsor, nothing more… and the clerk slid across a blue passeport provisoire as though lending us breath on credit.

The stamp thudded like a small door and the sea withdrew into its own dark breathing; Paris was named as the place where our true papers would remember us.

If the man at the Prefecture asks for more than our names, who will step ashore wearing what is left of us.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story, including the word ‘mark’.   Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2026.