dust and ducks, hundreds of tiny avocados and shopping carts. these people selling their goods and their bads on a blanket on the ground, with their kids jumping around or lying on a pile of clothes. spread around the most infamous neighborhood, sundays here are crowded with people doing their groceries from the moroccans. they sell so much parsley it's almost scary. blonde dolls, lamps and cassettes, a couch and a bunch of mirrors, socks and jewelry and an old green wool sweater i like. i ask him cuánto vale, he says sesenta. i think that's seventy and i hand him the cents; he shows me the coins in his hand and tells me i gave him setenta. every spanish number from eleven to twenty sounds the same to me. i gesture with a nodding head that it's okay and keep walking, counting in my head; cincuenta, sesenta, setenta.
then there's a blue wig. short beautiful plastic. cincuenta this time. i give him half an euro. i don't bargain, i just take it and hold it and hold it and hold it, when i hear a rooster crowing like it's five am at the countryside. i take out my camera and snap a photo of a man probably dealing these birds for cockfighting. looks like it's legal only in this part of the country. la gioconda is all alone, by the trash bags and a lot of leather shoes.
you could probably start a second hand shop only with all the things these people leave behind.
before the sun sets, we walk on the shore, watching people taking off their sneakers and step into the sea. it's cold and i shudder with a thin scarf under my chin, i promise not to laugh at the lullaby people dressing like it's minus celsius. not again. the waves look painted, a background for dogs playing fetch, people staring, fishermen feeling lucky. the city, alive as every other night, conversations by the window glass, by the block, by the iglesia.
there's blue waiting at home. perfect alien blue.
