The town the ships left behind

Written in Kotor, July 2025. Typed up today.

The horn came from somewhere behind the mountains. A low note that sat in my chest, then thinned to nothing.

Kotor lies at the end of a bay so tight the ships have to reverse out. I watched one rotate in the morning, its stern inching past the old walls.

The ships came in at eight. By nine the lanes were full. Groups of ten or twelve walked behind a raised umbrella or a laminated card. Someone’s phone flashed against the cathedral door. The gelato shop had a queue that bent round the corner and almost touched the cats under the plane tree.

A guide held up a printed sign with a number on it. Her group gathered in a tight circle, blocking the lane. I just waited. She moved them forward. We did this twice more before I turned down a passage that smelled of drains and basil.

I took my coffee to the steps near the river. A tabby lay on the warm stone beside me, one paw hanging off the edge. He didn’t flinch when a man with a selfie stick nearly stepped on his tail. The man laughed. The cat did not.

At five the last ship reversed into the bay. The horn again, longer this time. Nobody waved goodbye. Twenty minutes later the lanes belonged to the people who lived there.

A woman swept soapy water from her doorway. A boy kicked a ball against the wall until someone leaned out a window and told him to stop. The stone went amber, the way it had in that olive press town in Ayvalik, and I stayed where I was until it was nearly dark.

That was the town I preferred. The one nobody photographed.

Anyway. The coffee here is good.