Do you need a black bustier trimmed in blue, white satin gloves, a panda bear?
A brooch, a model battleship, a beacon from the French army?
Something that whispers hey, I’ve been around. I could tell you stories.
They were there last weekend, at the Brocante de Noël in the troisième arrondissement.
Would you like a lace-trimmed hat, a set of tools, a garden gnome?
They travelled in white vans and were spread on tables, or they came in bundle buggies and were laid on blankets.
They had outlived their owners, or been abandoned, left to make their own way through the world: vagabond sunglasses, unemployed cameras.
They coursed through the streets trailing pieces of lost history—evenings spent at needlework, the morning when the tricycle-horse was new.
