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. 

Cesson-Sevigne Break into Reality

It has been less than five days since I arrived in my new home, Cesson-Sevigne, a quiet town nestled just outside the larger metropolis of Rennes. I can already feel the loving sprouts of familiarity winding, filling the space between me and its local virtues.

Its morning smell of bread and butter, the quiet rustle of voices outside my window, and the soft breaks of rain that permeate the streets with nature’s aroma.

My apartment, above the bakery of my employer, looks over the slight street and onto the butchershop, bustling with morning deliveries and the day’s local rush. Just around the corner is a store for home goods and tea; single-seat tables dot the space outside and beckon passers-by to peer inside. An old church stands in angled antiquity over the small market square.

Just down the road extends the bridged entrance, welcoming me with shallow waters and a cobblestone path meant for entrance by foot, bike, or car; all transport small enough to be the same. Stones pierce the water’s surface alongside patches of flowers and tufts of mossy green.

It has taken me longer than usual to write of this entrance. With my laptop sent on its merry way for repairs, I have found myself without my natural motivation. There are only so many times I can write fresh and alive about the cobblestone, stone walls, stone bridges, stone everything. Yes, France is green and beautiful, and it is enough to choke my throat with my luck, but how many ways can I say grass before they are all just words we all glaze over as we scan my next post?

I am craving something new, something real, or at least more authentic than the typical introduction to my next village. It’s still true that my eyes trace the nature around me with an attachment to the ethereal and earthly details, and my mind winds with a million ways to say this is original love, but I will be here for a while. There is plenty of time to languish in the details.

Boarding the C6 bus takes me to Rennes’ center. The wheeled journey travels along split pavement that breaks for the river’s channel. My gaze trades this view for my book as I avoid the stare of the man who insisted on speaking to me at the bus stop.

Plath

I am looking at you, Sylvia,
and your page gifts me some solace from the man
who stares and talks at me
though I don’t meet his eye.
Just because we board the same bus
does not mean we have anything in common
but the same slow ride to the center.

I see gray dot his beard while
I wade, barely ankle deep in my 20s.
What does he expect me to say
when he tells me he speaks very little English
and I lie,
saying I speak no French,
none at all.

Why does he ask where I live,
and why am I so polite that I reflexively ask his name
when he asks for mine?
Why did this instinct grip me, Sylvia?
Why do I prefer my discomfort to a scene at his expense?
I don’t want to make things worse,
so I let him do that.

I choose the single lonely seat,
he cannot sit next to me, so he sits across from me.
Of course he does,
I asked his name,
didn’t I?

I see silver on his left ring finger, and
I feel his eyes on my hands as I write to you.
The corner of his eye wonders
what could I possibly have to write?
What could be so pressing I must avert my gaze?

Sylvia, what makes the difference
between him and the other men
I try and understand.
I met one yesterday and gave him my number,
gladly,
with a real smile.

But he waited for my grin and gaze
and did not insist on everything.
He did not continue on
after I had stopped talking,
after I barely started.
He did not rise with me at my stop,
exiting the doors behind me and calling
the name I let him learn.
He did not trail my brisk footsteps,
or make me shake with anger, pepperspray grip in my pocket,
or press through my truthful answer.

No, I do not want to get coffee with you, no.
There doesn’t need to be a reason,
but he needs one so he can understand.
His one-track mind can only fathom my lie.
I don’t want coffee with you,
and he waits for the because.
Because I have a boyfriend,
I don’t Sylvia,
but thats the only because he knows.
Back off, he understands now,
not because I am my own and don’t owe him my presence,
but back off,
because
I am already another man’s property.

And Sylvia, what is respect but between two men?

Men are the same in every country. I try and brush this off as I continue on my way to the bookstore, checking over my shoulder every two seconds to make sure he’s really gone. He is, as far as I can tell, but I still feel every presence around me like a threat, and it is too early for this. 10am? Jesus Christ.

I’ve calmed down by the time I make my purchase, an English to French workbook I will attempt to instruct myself with as every real course is too expensive. Though finding an affordable course has proved difficult, I refuse to be discouraged.

If I dedicate myself to reading french books, completing workbooks for grammar, and speaking to as many people as possible in a day, my comprehension and expression will surely improve. Saying yes to the kinder Frenchmen who ask me to coffee can’t hurt either, though I spend half these dates nodding along, smiling when they do, and repeating a casual “ouias, ouias” every so often.

Regardless, dating is good practice, and it’s fun to play along.

Like most cities at the end of Summer, Rennes is littered with construction sites. Work trucks blare loudly down the street as yellow and orange vests circle city craters. These swollen trucks crowd the small aisles of the street and are often circled by police cars.

Besides my usual disgust at their presence, I also possess a new fear of these officers due to my french employment and lack of visa to extend my stay in the EU.

The three-month limit has crept up quickly and prickles me with that familiar flighty feeling that screams, “you’ve got to go!”

But I don’t want to. I want to stay. I want to learn this life for a while.

My visa will come, despite my stress, and a WWII caveat extends my legal stay from three weeks to two months. Still, my spine shutters with uncertainty.

Nothing Dire

This is the message sent & delivered (quietly).
The message that pops through the apple ether & sprouts
with an earlier time stamp on my mother’s phone.

Nothing dire, but call me.
Nothing dire, but tears are threatening me in this cafe.
Nothing dire, but my life is kind of perfect- and what if it’s taken away?

Are the cracks beginning to show?
I fill their hairline fractures shallowly, like makeup
over a bruise, just enough so I can squint & ignore & look
upon my other features.
Can I see them spreading,
like a network of roots beneath me,
perhaps.

I am so afraid of water’s presence,
next to anything with an on button.
I’ll dry, you can cry on me,
but don’t you dare juice an apple,
not while my fingers rest on its keys.

Why must there be passports,
why visas & contracts & cameras.
tracking tracking tracking,
marking me for taking up space.

I am so petrified of the police,
even though I am young & innocent &
if that isnt enough, I’m white.

I’m not illegal,
not yet.

Nothing dire, but I can hear hooks’ crocodile hunting me.
Nothing dire, but my stay is a ticking time bomb.
Nothing dire, but it’s counting backward until I am a violation.

An aberration for my presence, but
I just want to live free,
somewhere off cruel soil- off my soil.
That dirt, colored cruel because I know too much.
Give me fresh, clean soil! Or if not,
give me mud marked ancient & wet
by tears I do not understand enough to join in the crying.

Nothing dire, but I need new ignorance.
Nothing dire, but just for a moment.