Scattering the March

I was not beaten but the boy beside me was. He broke stride, stumbled, the sticks circled over him, corralling him into their world. I met his eyes and lip-read “run,” a whisper engulfed in sirens. I slowed down in an unknown neighborhood, a street of watch repairers, tinsmiths, tailors sitting cross-legged in dim windows staring at lacquered Singers like men whose eyes are lost in a fire, and I ducked past them glancing sideways in deep pity because I’d been a step away from freedom.