I buy a shirt, a blue shirt, a button down. I drink a glass of wine, a red, a Malbec. And I watch. I stand still in the midst of the St. Cloud Market. The crowd—that singular being— jostles and jockeys and talks in broken English. I chew gum, cinnamon gum, Nicorette. I feel my habit inverting, bending, becoming mechanical. And I must flirt and be moral with the shopkeeper who looks a little like me. And I must revert to an irrational, emotional, childlike state as I buy three pirated DVDs.
The crowd forms a circle instinctually. Three women dance slowly in the center. Paper falls from the sky, newsprint, a day old.
Gunfire, the sound of it, its slowing of time. No one says a thing and no one's feet make a sound and every child is perfectly behaved for one relentless moment.