They all skit around. Fast and edgy. I'm the only one sitting. They float gingerly. I sit.

I can hear it from far away. That skritchy music in a language that's forbidden and quite unrecognizable. It skits past.

School is over. They're all hurrying home. I sit. The teacher has left. The principal herself comes in and starts badgering me about my uniform again. I have a white apron not black. I don't hear her. I hear it.

From far away.

I walk out.

Brown and white look better than brown and black anyway.

It's getting darker, bluer. The apartment building is silver not grey.

All the kids are inside, the bench babushkas too.

I am the only one.

Still in uniform everyone else is inside. I can see the window lights.

Our entrance is the only one with jasmine growing along the benches where the babushkas sit all day. Now I sit. Alone. The jasmine whispers.

Whispers of something about the East. It rustles and bends over me. The sky is overcast.

I walk up the stairs. I do not take the elevator to the ninth floor.

I walk. My footsteps echo against the bright concrete. I am home.