It's Still Life

Brigid’s Diary, 1834

The Crowd Becomes a Question — Episode II

The crowd tightened without warning, sound folding in on itself until every voice became an elbow.

I stepped forward because hunger has an arithmetic I know by heart, and the children nearest me were speaking it with their whole bodies.
Chopped language and uniforms surfaced like punctuation, blue and deliberate, asking for names as if names were the trouble.

Felreil swore once… low …and took my arm, pride cracking into motion as papers mattered more than blood.

We were carried sideways, the air percussion echoes and lead skipping the cobbles, the sound of shots floating briefly above the shouting before dropping back into breath and wool and doorframes, his hand iron on my wrist, mine still open toward the looms I could hear refusing to stop.

If a question can be made of bodies, then the answer is this: we lived by leaving, and the city went on breathing without us.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “float”. Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.