abandonment
English version (her name was Rosalie)
From her grocery store, when she would not be discussing the weather with her customers, she enjoyed watching the kids playing across the street. Later on, as she got older, she would be looking at the passersby from her upstairs window. And then there were not many people passing by, and so Rosalie slowly faded away.
No one has taken over her store. Along with Rosalie, Fontenoy also insidiously died, now displaying broken windows, wild grasses between the cobblestones… and cats, reigning unchallenged over the empty streets.
Not far from the marina or mountain bike trails, a stone's throw from the castle or the embroidery museum, there are these abandoned houses with locked doors and windows. In the backyards nature is slowly taking over again. We are now looking at a gradually deserted Vôge, hit by unemployment.
Welcome to Fontenoy-le-Château … *
* This text is partly a fiction. Rosalie was actually very young in 2014, she had tried to revive the grocery store in Fontenoy-le-Château. But the empty streets, the abandoned houses, really exist. . . So do the cats !
Philippe Lhote, juin 2019
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