The sun doesn't set in Rethymno so much as it gives up slowly. Gold to copper to a bruised rose that sits behind the Fortezza for longer than you'd expect. The fortress is just a shape now, heavier than the sky behind it, and I keep watching like it might move. It won't. That's the point.
Below me the old town is doing its nightly trick. Lanes that were sleepy and cat-filled an hour ago are filling with warm light, the yellow kind that leaks from taverna doorways and catches the bougainvillea overhead. I can hear someone dragging a chair across stone. A motorbike somewhere too far away to matter. The smell is jasmine and grilled octopus, which sounds like it shouldn't work, but Crete doesn't care what should work.
The raki was poured by the guesthouse owner, a man named Giorgos who said almost nothing and smiled like that was enough. It burns in the right way. Not smooth, not trying to be. Cretan raki is honest, which is more than you can say for most drinks people hand you in beautiful places. I'm holding the glass against the last of the light and the camera is beside me on the ledge, loaded with Portra, but I haven't picked it up. Some evenings are not for documenting. Some evenings are for sitting inside of.
I've been in Rethymno four days now. I came for two. The Venetian port, the minarets next to church bells, the way the town holds so many histories without making a museum of itself. It just lives in all of them at once. Tomorrow I might take the coast road east, or I might not. The rooftop will be here again at nine. Giorgos will pour without asking. The Fortezza will do exactly what it did tonight. Saudade is usually about missing a place you've left. But sometimes you feel it while you're still there, already knowing you'll want this back.
