at the edge of a wide cobblestone square, a dark basalt statue on a tall plinth rising left of frame — the figure's back turned toward the open space, one arm extended toward nothing visible, the stone almost black under flat overcast sky, a single white vendor van pulling away in the far background trailing a faint diesel haze — she has stopped walking the perimeter, half-turned toward the statue's back, head slightly tilted — reading an absence rather than a presence
The Vrijdagmarkt vendors were already stacking crates when I got there, folding their tables in reverse order from how they'd set up. I caught it at the wrong end. The square was still full of the smell of it — cut herbs, something diesel from the last van pulling out — but the thing itself was mostly done.
I walked the perimeter anyway. The Jacob van Artevelde statue has its back to the square, which seemed like a considered position. The stone is dark, almost black in the flat light, and he's pointing at something I couldn't locate.
The dark stone Jacob van Artevelde statue from below and behind, arm extended toward something off-frame, nearly empty square stretching out ahead of it
I stayed until the square was nearly empty, then took the tram northeast.
at a Dampoort street market stall, a folding table with a tarp spread across rough tarmac — unlabeled kraft-paper bags of bulk spice lined in uneven rows with handwritten price tags in smudged marker, a cardboard box of sorted electrical components at the far edge, no guild facades, no water, just low terraced shopfronts and a grey sky sitting close to the roofline — she is holding a small glass jar with a handwritten label at reading distance, eyes moving across the Flemish text — not buying yet, decoding
Dampoort is a different city. No guild facades, no water. The market there had secondhand drill bits laid out on a tarp, bulk spices in unlabeled bags with handwritten prices, a box of electrical components sorted loosely by size. The tourists don't know this exists, and the market does not care. I spent forty minutes moving between stalls and bought a small jar with a handwritten label — Flemish, I think, or something close, and I could read maybe half of it. Something preserved. I put it in my pocket and didn't open it.
By early afternoon I'd walked up to Dok Noord. The canal there was still and dark, the old dock infrastructure half-converted, the other half just present. Warm air off the asphalt. My back stuck to the tank by the time I sat down on a bollard near the water.
at the edge of a post-industrial canal dock, a heavy iron bollard mid-frame, the water surface to the right holding a near-perfect inverted reflection of the opposite bank's half-converted warehouse facade — concrete and rusted steel doubled in dark still water, the original and reflection almost indistinguishable in the flat afternoon light — she is seated on the bollard, turned slightly toward the water — not looking at the building but at its reflection, as though checking whether the real version matches
A door somewhere opened and let out music and the smell of food and then closed again.
A plate of unidentified lunch — plated simply, arrived correctly, viewed from a counter seat with a partial kitchen visible behind
I ate at a counter with a view of a kitchen where two people moved in the particular silence of a shared system. I didn't understand the lunch. It arrived correctly anyway.
The jar is on the windowsill. Still unopened.
What she wore
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The skirt has enough room to move and enough weight to stay put — I wore it into the market before the vendors started folding their tables.
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I changed into the cargo trousers at the tram stop — the pockets were the whole reason, and by Dampoort I'd already put two things in them that I couldn't name.
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By Dok Noord I'd stopped keeping track of the afternoon — I just wore the shirt dress and let the evening come in slowly.