This Is Not a Walk
after Chagall’s La promenade

This is not a woman flying.
This is not a man holding the wrist of his weather.
This is not love,
though love is often accused of such public misconduct.

The green beneath them is not a field.
It is not obedience pretending to be grass.
It is not the ancestral courtyard where daughters learn how low the sky can be.

The houses are not houses.
They are not witnesses with their windows buttoned shut.
They are not relatives leaning out to ask where she is going
in that dress,
with that body,
with that much altitude.

The bouquet is not a bouquet.
It is not apology.
It is not proof that romance has completed its paperwork.

The small red church is not a church.
It is not permission.
It is not the office where joy must apply
for a identity certificate,
salary slip, father’s signature,
and two passport-size photographs.

And he—the man on the ground—
is not a saviour.

Let us be clear.

He is not gravity.
He is not ownership.
He is not the nail holding her blue hem to the village map.

He is only a hand still surprised to be trusted.

She is not escaping.
She is not performing lightness for the museum wall.

She is what happens when the body remembers
it was never a cupboard,
never a locked room,
never the careful daughter
folded into the good bedsheet.

Above them, the sky
is not blue.
It is not sky.
It is a loophole.

And the air—that shameless clerk—
has misplaced every form
that once required her
to stay.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Don’t box me in: Chagall by Melissa Lemay on May 19, 2026.