the richard lenoir market is sunny and calm, like usual. pockets of riotous haggling and hawking mixed with demeure stands of lilting flowers. the cheese ladies are busque and sweet, they respond quickly and with deft movements of large knifes, scoring enormous and dense mounds of conté, jarlesburg, st nectaire, et forme d'ambert. the fraises are spoiling in the sun, they emit an odor so ripe that it should make you blush.

i want to show you this array of fruits and vegetables, the lascivious eyes of vendors, the old women trucking with their loads. meghann and i meet on the benches, we laugh squinting into the sun and she shows me black and white pictures that brian took last weekend. i bring her the mail from her old address, we exchange stories before she runs back to work.

on the way home, i pass the café and tabac where a few people my age are sitting. a woman in a blue and white polka dotted sweater scratches fervently at a lottery ticket, a man bends over some notes he is furiously scribbling. the fish man winks at me, and hellos from the café next door. the crèpe man smiles and says nothing, his earring glints through the steam of his kitchen.

i stop before the butcher's and watch him cut meat from the doorway. this is how i feel, like the meat. in his hands, i am soft, and i divide easily, but looking closer, every fiber, in it's own way, resists the knife. my meat is divided between places and people and i resist the blade to not come apart, but what use? i carry you everywhere. but i can't show my life here, i cannot say, this is the store front with the beautiful drawings of insects that deteriorate into ink spltters, this is the place where they sell wax and fine paper, this is the place where a man fixes chairs, his shop is so full of them, how do you think he moves? they are all over each other, a jumble of legs and seats of different pattens and woods. this is the place where they sell stringed instruments. how many do you see. my favorite tree is leafing out, the cost of peonies, the neighbors that play algerian music late in the afternoon and the father who sings along, the son who toots long sultry notes on the trumpet.

some days, i wrap around myself and respond only to me. and like this i spin to fast, orbit too close around myself. then, throw out a wing and lift my bat shriek into the night, locate myself by the echoes bouncing back.

last night, as recommended, i opened the windows wide and moved the fern take the green chair. listened to winterreise all the way through, then went to bed. no dreams.