Cesson Saturday Marche

and the beauty of saying goodbye.

No Feelings Involved.

As soon as it touches my tips

I’d do anything for it.

Just another wisp of that feeling.

Not feeling- that flavor of feeling.

The nudging more

unfurling blank white maps

under the nearest pen. 

That embrace, embrace me,

push more of that cyclical urge

give me more of my closest vice.

Crash whichever wave can burrow a rabbit hole,

dealer’s choice.

Drink on that beating music,

that bass that thinks 

“Am I only two letters to you?”

Fall into the fragile and feminine feeling.

The simple word

I’ll say it a million times

because it never stays that same shade of same.

Close, but no cigar.

I don’t see lingering smoke

not quite like the fresh puff

the starting spark

the way I drag my hand across the page.

Red pen, bleeding, even though you prefer blue.

Maybe because you like to keep it inside,

so do it again,

oxidize it. 

Each Saturday, vendors by the dozen drive their trucks and trailers to Cesson’s old town center. They open their pop-ups to the waiting crowd of weekend shoppers that disperse, filling each row in the Church parking lot. 

Families stride along the older generation’s wheeled sacks with paper cups of espresso and the tin foil that rounds galettes. This Brittany staple is my first objective upon entering the colored maze. 

The rye flour crepe is flipped and wrapped around a saucisse with your choice of mustard or ketchup. I opted for mustard, obviously, and exchanged two euros eighty for my breakfast. 

It only took a few minutes before my gloved hand was unwrapped and replaced by the warmth of my galette saucisse. 

Biting through the layers, I wandered shop to shop, quickly realizing that though the market certainly covers the expected assortment of vegetables, fruit, bread, coffee, meat, and your other weekly necessities, it also hosts a vast array of ulterior vendors. 

These sellers propagate their stands with everything from locks to scarves and a/c units to handmade cutlery. 

I walked, in wonder, thinking about the assortment of lives that must exist behind each tent and trailer. 

Each Week

We do the same.

See the same,

Talk the same,

Breathe the same.

The same people greet us, don’t they?

With the same assortment of coins. 

I wind violet scarves around dainty necks

and these pale-faced women reflect

pretending like they want to take them home

this week, or maybe next, though really, they shouldn’t.

I stuff their husbands with stuffed sausage,

stabbed samples in not-quite-the-same size,

and they act like an absence of splinters would change their mind. 

We do the same.

Stop breathing the same.

Choke sounds the same,

The same eyes fade before mine, don’t they?

When I’ve sufficiently stalked the most interesting perimeters of these pop-up shops, I cross the slow-moving street. Opposite the market’s occupation of the old church parking lot grows a lush garden of flowers, even in this Winter’s early days. 

Pink bursts in roses and green vines wind their way down the manicured maze that tracks visitors through each end of the garden. I let my eyes wander this landscape, pausing on purple and fluttering over yellow flowers. I found my favorite space nestled in the marriage of two stone walls, just beyond a row of trees that break for a full view of the garden’s expanse. 

The wind’s lagging gusts set the pace, and I finish my saucisse slowly. Despite the cold, I am in no rush. I only have one more Saturday market before I break from this French alternate life and return to my America for nearly a month. 

It is bittersweet, splitting my heart between what I know and what I’ve come to know. I don’t know how it will feel, but I do know part of me will stay here—nestled among the fleurs and arching arbres of this French fantasy. 

Coming Home.

It’s so exciting, isn’t it?

Laying your new silhouette over your old outline. 

Seeing what parts of you still fit.

Maybe you will feel the same as you always have. 

Too big here, too small there.

To everyone else, you look the same. Beautiful, even.

But you’ve outgrown this box of beauty. 

The word means something else now. 

You know too much about yourself,

because now you know nothing. 

You know too much about this place,

because each minute change slaps your skin

like a new floater on the glass of your eye. 

Everything hovers, holding same 

by holding the nature it never quite stays.

Like a city can get botox, 

self-tanner on the same performative parts,

Angelina’s leg buffed and bold. 

You see this now, as you saw it before

and the same sad sticks to your wave-washed feet

salt for the wounds of constant summer. 

The sun reds your nose rather than the burn of snow

and there is just something about the way

you could change forever

and still come home. 

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