“Somewhere, Sometime”

“Somewhere, Sometime”

Browsing the flea market at Clignancourt is my Sunday afternoon pleasure.

Most of the antiques—many little more than junk—bear the irremovable smudges of age: nicks, scratches, and cracks speaking of lives lived before I was born.

Cheap rings, imitation necklaces. Outdated teacups, glasses, cutlery.

Worn books with blacked-out passages and yellowed back issues of old magazines.

Porcelain fèves from Galette des Rois piled in wicker baskets.

Charming, in their own derelict way, these things line over two thousand stalls—each like a tiny museum of forgotten days.

To walk, to pause, to imagine the journey each piece has taken to arrive here—

it’s like traveling through time.

Though I must admit, under this gray winter sky, the faded colors of the tents, the limp texture of their cloth, and the dull gleam of the wares feel more lackluster than usual.

I often find myself drawn to ceramics and glass. I’m also quite fond of paintings.

Photographs, though—especially faded portraits or soot-streaked black-and-whites—have a pull I can’t explain.

So when I stopped in front of that one image, when my gaze locked on it and refused to let go,

it felt inevitable.

A deep indigo cloth spread across the table. Postcards, small anonymous paintings, and pamphlets from films I’d never heard of—all arranged neatly.

Among them stood a single folded photo frame.

It was a color photo, though clearly aged.

A young man, caught mid-gesture, brushing windblown hair from his eyes, looks straight into the camera.

Behind him, the sea; judging by his clothes, it was summer—or the end of spring.

Northern European features, handsome, perhaps late teens or early twenties.

Platinum blond hair, green eyes.

Eyes slightly slanted, like a cat that doesn’t care to remember you.

He squints, half-laughing, revealing the tips of his front teeth.

In the sky behind him, three birds are frozen mid-flight, like ink dropped on canvas.

“Do you like that one?”

A voice calls out, and I turn to see the stallkeeper—a girl, surprisingly young.

No more than early teens.

She has straight black hair tied in a ponytail and large hazel eyes that wink at me playfully.

“Uh… yeah. He’s cool-looking,” I answer.

She beams, her mouth forming a crisp little V, cheeky and sweet.

“Wanna buy it? Five euros.”

I glance between her face and the young man’s in the photo, again and again.

And then, after a moment, I return the frame to its vacant spot.

“Nah… I think I’ll pass.”

There are things that belong to someone—someone particular.

And when it comes to objects that carry time within them—etched through fading and cracks—

that resonance becomes all the more important.

This young man, nameless and beautiful, seemed somehow still alive in the image,

as if he were waiting.

“Oh yeah?”

The girl shrugs. She gazes at the photo—perhaps one she’s seen countless times—

then looks toward the street, then back to me.

“So why did you set it up on the stand?”

I glance once more at the photo, now propped facing the street, tilted slightly upward.

“I don’t know… I just had a feeling he was waiting for someone.”

That smile—it wasn’t sad, exactly, but it wasn’t whole either.

No tears, and yet, it looked like the kind of smile you make when you’re trying not to cry.

“Romantic,” she murmured, eyes drifting back to the passing crowd.