market day

the butcher's wife carries a spit strung with three fat chickens in her thick, red hands. they are gooey with chicken insides and deft for their roundness. she wears rubber shoes to tromp through the wasted guts, blood, and water on the floor. she smiles. her teeth are small and straight, and she is beautiful with the hair on her temples sticking to her perspiration, and her eyes keen with things to do. the butcher laughs with his head high, he is king of the meat-- they observe proudly. pink hams kissing out of the display case, plump black boudin sausages, aged dried meats ringed white with hardened fat, red marbled steaks, and naked embarrassed chickens, whole and cut. his knives are sharp and sturdy, he swings the blades perfectly, brother to their heft, as though it took no skill or concentration to cleave the joints from each other and divide small dead bodies into desirable shapes. older couple come out on tuedays, the old women choosing to argue with their husbands about the necessary quantity, they push out to feel the push back: care about this! about me, now, what i'm doing! and their husbands watch them patiently, some take the bait, others do not. i'll humor her, or, i'll just hold her purse and watch her hands now as she reaches for the dense parcel, wrapped in paper, as she reaches over me to her wallet in the bag at my side, as she unfolds the right bills, mentally gauging how much she needs for the next stop: the fruit seller, the fish man, the dry cleaning-- she pays, receives change, slips the money into her pocket, threads her arm through mine... and he lets himself play the guide as they turn, and exit to the street.

on richard lenoir, the fruit sellers call, like always. they move frenetically, bagging and weighing. two melons? for today or later, they gauge the ripeness of the fruit and slip it into brown bags. potatoes, eight kinds, apples of all colors, cider from normandy, gallon buckets full of olives and nes tapenades. the crepe-maker flips a galette and the steams is less theatrical, now that it's warm. egg, then cheese, then salt, pepper, ham. he doesn't look up until he's finished. oranges splash across every fruit stand and myrtilles glisten like jewels next to the other berries. ripe bananas from martinique, french cornice pears, african and israeli avocados, tomatoes must be growing somewhere, but expensively. sharp small of herbs emanates over the lettuce stand, two heads for a euro fifty. mint, chives, tarragon, rosemary, basil, thyme, parsley. broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, cabbages, long and stately leeks, bushy tailed carrots, black roots, white ones, radishes, cucumber, parsnips, steamed beets with no stems or leaves, eggplants. purses, knives, leather shoes, umbrellas,, kitchenwares, bad clothing, scarves.

it takes this long to adjust. even in a city where you've lived before. months! and to come back, that too, will be an adjustment, as it was the first time. stranger, for being so, so familiar. stranger, for having changed. and the self, also stranger, and more familiar in its strangeness.