It's Still Life

Liturgy for Market Day at Vienne
(where the living bargain and the dead witness)

I. The Uneven World
The stone setts are uneven,
not worn smooth by time,
but accusing.
Each misstep a reminder:
you do not belong here.
Your feet have not learned
this city’s particular limp.

Felreil’s boots slip in the persistent drizzle.
My hems drag through muck
that smells of horses and hunger.
We have left the boat
to stretch our legs,
to breathe something other than coal soot
and the sour sweat of strangers.

But the market breathes back
and its breath is not kind.

II. The Argument at the Bread Stall
A woman and a baker.
The price of bread.
The price of grain.
Failed crops that fill no bellies
but line the pockets of men
who did not starve.

Her voice rises.
His voice rises.
Elbows push and swear.
The crowd tightens
like a fist around a grievance.

I buy camomile, arnica, lavender,
small comforts for small wounds,
while Felreil’s hand closes on my arm,
a warning, flagging
the foreign curl of our pronunciation.

We leave,
but the argument follows,
a ghost that will not stay
at the bread stall.

III. The Ruins That Receive
Narrow paths.
Forgotten gates.
Jasmine climbing stones
that have not felt the sun
since Rome fell.

We slip between ghosts
into the Théâtre Romain,
drizzle softening the edges
of everything that once was sharp.

The amphitheatre receives us
as it receives all:
without judgment,
without welcome,
without warmth.

IV. The Seer in the Ruins
An old man sits where applause used to live.
Life has written its ledger
on his face,
his hands,
the slump of his shoulders.

“I am mad,” he says,
as if introducing himself,
as if everyone else has already decided.

I sit beside him
and tend the sores.
No argument,
no sermon,
only the old work of hands.

“The old ways are dying,” he mutters.
Felreil looks at the broken stone and says,
“Buried, but not dead.”

The old man studies Felreil
as if sight were a blade,
then murmurs,
“I see a dead man walking.”

V. The Poster on the Wall
We walk back toward the river
and the market’s noise thins
into the drizzle’s hush.

And there it is:
AVIS IMPORTANT
RECHERCHÉ PAR LA JUSTICE
AGITATEUR SÉDITIEUX ET DANGEREUX

The words leap from the wall
like an accusation.
The face on the poster is not ours,
not yet,
but it could be.

Brigid does not stop.
Felreil does not look back.
We have learned not to linger
where our faces might be remembered.

Yet the poster follows us.
To the boat,
to the cabin,
to the sleepless night ahead.

VI. For the Watched
Remember the uneven stones
that teach your feet where you do not belong.
Remember the bread-stall argument;
may the woman’s hunger be answered
before the baker’s profit.

Remember the ruins that receive the lost,
and the madman’s eyes,
and the sores,
the thyme and patience
and no questions asked.

Remember the poster on the wall.
Not for its threat,
but for its warning:
run before the law flags your name.

And bless the travellers in drizzle
who carry camomile and fear,
who tend the wounds of strangers,
and keep walking.

That is not sedition.
That is survival.
And survival, in this century,
is revolution enough.