Marceau

 His body makes angles

obtuse and acute

suggesting walls here

and doors there.

He pinches at fireflies that give off no light

and chases them

down

flattened

stairs.

Though crickets are roaring and leaves clatter loudly,

the children can hear him just fine

when he leans back and shouts at the top of his lungs

(even though there’s no sound at the time)

And when jackboots sound,

that discordant sound,

The mime holds his arms straight and tight

and draws a long shade—an impenetrable shield—over children and grownups alike

and the soldiers

do not

see

“Shh!” Marceau mimes

This is my story for this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt (the photo at the top of the page). It’s loosely associated, I’ll grant you, but when I started looking into Marcel Marceau—and realized he’d gotten his start in miming as a way of keeping children silent as they made their way from Nazi-occupied France into neutral Switzerland during World War II—I decided this was the story to tell.

Let me know what you think below, then check out the rest of this week’s story’s with the linked blue dude above!