It's Still Life

Brigid’s Diary: Part 12.2, “Liturgy for the Loose Floorboard”
(Arles, 1836: where rebellion survives by passing from hand to hand)

I. The Sound of Arrival
It begins next door,
the shouting,
the boots on stairs,
a man’s voice heavy
as the stomp of his feet.

Furniture dragged across wood floors.
Children crying
because strangers have entered
their small kingdom of walls
and will not explain themselves.

She bites her lip
until she tastes salt and iron.
This is the flavour of waiting.
This is the taste of not yet,
the moment before the knock
that will change everything.

II. The Refusal to Burn
Felreil stands by the door,
listening to every plea,
every blow,
every sound that should not exist
in a house where children sleep.

“Burn it,” he says.
Meaning the pamphlet.
Meaning the evidence.
What option when words
could put them both
in chains.

Brigid refuses.
“Rebellion survives,” she says,
“by passing from hand to hand.”

Not by burning.
Not by hiding.
Not by pretending
the words were never written.

By passing.
By trust.
By the knowledge
that some truths are too heavy
for one pair of hands
and too light to ever let go.

III. The Dark Beneath the Board
The knock comes closer.
Up the stairs.
In the hallway.
A rhythm of authority
that expects to be answered.

Brigid moves to the floorboard,
the loose one,
the one she noticed
the first night in the yellow house,
the one that whispers here
when she walks across it.

She slides the pamphlet into the dark.
Dust rises like old breath,
like the house itself exhaling
a secret it has kept before
and will keep again.

She sets the rug back
as carefully as if she were
laying a body to rest.

Not destroyed.
Not abandoned.
Just entrusted
to the silence beneath their feet.

IV. The Slipping Away
And then,
they slip away.

Not running.
Running draws the eye,
quickens the pulse,
shouts out guilt
to anyone who watches.

Slipping is different.
Slipping is water.
Slipping is
part of the current,
the shadow,
the space between one breath and the next.

They slip down the back stairs,
through the kitchen,
past the garden where the herbs grow
that Brigid uses to heal
the neighbours the doctor refuses.

They slip into the Arles afternoon,
ordinary as bread,
forgettable as dust,
already becoming ghosts
in a city that will not remember
their faces
but will remember
that someone
got away.

And the pamphlet waits in the dark.
One day, someone will find it,
someone will read it,
someone will march.

And the boots will tremble.

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