08:55 and the old town hasn't decided if it's awake yet. Shutters half open. Somewhere a kettle, somewhere a radio, the smell of bread that isn't quite ready. I walk slow because the street won't let me do otherwise, cobblestones uneven under my boots, the kind that remember every cart that ever rolled over them.
The balconies are the whole reason I came this way. Carved wood, some painted, most peeling, all of them leaning out over the lane like they're trying to touch the house across from them. A few more years and gravity might win. For now they just hang there, beautiful in the way only tired things can be. My father would call this rovina, ruin, but say it like a compliment.
A cat on almost every windowsill. Different cat, same posture, same unbothered stare. One of them watches me lift the camera and doesn't move an inch, like she's done this before, like she knows the shutter sound and finds it boring. I take the photo anyway. She wins either way.
No one else on the street yet except an old man sweeping his section of pavement, unhurried, like the dust will still be there tomorrow if he doesn't get to it. It will. This is a city that wears its age without apologizing for it, paint chipping over doorways two hundred years old, satellite dishes bolted next to hand carved shutters. Nobody here is trying to convince you it's polished. That's the part I keep coming back for.
I sit on a step that isn't mine to sit on. Nobody minds. The light moves an inch, then another. Somewhere behind a wall, someone starts frying something with garlic, and my stomach makes the decision my brain hasn't yet: breakfast, then more walking, then probably getting lost again on purpose.
