Siracusa · Tuesday — Market and periphery

Day 5 · Siracusa

Tuesday — Market and periphery

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 Ortigia market / Borgata

at a fish stall in an open-air market, a slab of wet marble counter holding a whole swordfish on shaved ice, the ice dull-grey under flat overcast light, a row of similar stalls receding behind her into morning shadow — wrist raised, blood orange juice running toward her elbow, her other hand holding the half-eaten fruit — she has gone still, deciding nothing about it

The wrap skirt was the right choice. You stop more at a market than you think.

The swordfish was on ice before eight, laid out with the kind of care that exists before customers arrive — before the performance of selling begins. The vendor held his knife by the handle, not the blade, and set it down once to take money, then picked it up again. His customer didn't gesture at anything. She said what she wanted in a voice that assumed it would be there. It was.

I bought a blood orange from the next stall. Ate it standing up. The juice ran down my wrist and I didn't have anything to wipe it with and I didn't care.

a halved blood orange on a palm, juice running toward the wrist, pulp catching flat diffused light

The light was flat all morning. No shadows. The ice under the swordfish caught what little there was and held it differently than ice usually does — duller, more serious. That's what I photographed.

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on a narrow residential street in the inland borgata, a building facade behind her showing three or four distinct layers of plaster — ochre under white under grey, a ghost of a painted number still legible beneath the outermost coat, a closed wooden shutter at head height to her left — stopped at the edge of the pavement, having just folded the overshirt into the bag — the bag not yet fully closed, the sun doing something tentative through cloud overhead

The bus to Borgata took eleven minutes. The overshirt went on before I boarded. Old habit.

Inland, the streets widened and the limestone got less precious. Laundry between buildings. A pharmacy with a handwritten card in the window. A school letting out into a courtyard.

a short espresso in a white ceramic cup on a Formica counter, vintage coffee machine with Italian script on its body behind it

The bar had the feel of a room that stopped changing its mind sometime around 1974 and has held that position without effort. Formica counter, a coffee machine with the look of something serviced but never replaced. I ordered standing. The man beside me was folded into a newspaper, working a crossword or a football analysis — I couldn't tell. He shifted slightly when I arrived, not to make room, just the small acknowledgment of shared space.

Nobody looked at me in any particular way.

That's what I wanted. Not to be nobody, not exactly. Just to be unremarkable in the way a regular is unremarkable. The bar in Córdoba had that. This one had it too. The coffee was short and exact and cost what it should.

inside a Formica-countered bar in a limestone inland town, the counter surface worn to a shine along its near edge, a large chrome espresso machine against the back wall — its reflection warped in the machine's curved surface, tungsten strip lighting running low beneath the overhead cabinet — espresso cup just set down, her hand still loosely around it, not yet withdrawn — the man beside her folded into his newspaper, their elbows near but not touching

I put the overshirt back in the bag on the way out. The sun was doing something tentative through the cloud, nothing committed, but enough.

A cat sat on a closed shutter. Ears back. Thinking about nothing.

What she wore

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I wore the wrap skirt because markets are not places for trousers — you need something that moves when you stop moving.

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The overshirt went on for the bus — not because it was cold, just because the bus always feels like somewhere slightly more formal than the street.

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I didn't want to explain myself to anyone tonight — one piece, one colour, done.