The smell of bread hit you before you even saw the bakery — hot, yeasty, alive. Too hot to touch, too good not to tear into anyway. Tomatoes bursting in your hand, a mess of seeds and pulp — disgusting, hilarious. Watermelon dripping down your arms until you’re sticky enough to draw ants, so you lick yourself clean like some feral kid.
Grapes straight off the vine, popped into mouths before they even hit the bowl. Olive pits flicked into the dirt like ammo. Meat spitting fat over open fire — the kind of smell that makes your stomach growl before you realize you’re starving.
Your hands stained green from ripping mint out of the garden. The radio chattering in Greek — you don’t understand a damn word, but it sounds like joy on repeat. Cards slap the table in the shade, chairs wobble like they want you on the ground. Cousins tearing through dust clouds, half-wild, half-free.
The sea whispers when the chaos dies down, then your skin dries salty and itchy from swimming. Ice cream melts faster than you can eat it, dripping onto your bare feet. Metal spoons clinking in tall glasses of coffee, the tablecloth lifting like it wants to escape too.
Somebody always passes out in the shade, hat pulled down like a curtain call. And just when the stillness almost settles — someone yells, “FOOOD!” and the whole world wakes up again.
