The Long Market

It is a market the way a river is water. It goes off in both directions further than the light does, under an awning of something that is not canvas and not sky, and the crowd is not all from one place, and none of them find you strange, which is the strangest part.

Somebody sells rain by the jar. Somebody sells the second half of arguments. There is a smell of hot fat and cold iron and a spice you will spend years failing to find again.

Three stalls have their lamps lit. At the far end, past all of it, one small flame that does not seem to be selling anything.