Down on Lantern Street,
where the awnings flap like gossip,
there’s a marketplace
that sells emotions like produce.

Joy comes in crates.
Bright, bruised,
and priced by the pound.
Sadness is cheaper,
stacked in blue paper cones
beside the wilted herbs.

Anger sizzles in jars
that rattle when you shake them.
Hope is sold in tiny bundles
that smell faintly of rain.

Vendors shout their bargains:
“Two laughs for a coin!”
“Fresh awe, picked at dawn!”
“Regret; half off,
but no returns.”

And tucked in the far corner,
past the stalls of ordinary ache,
past the barrels of nostalgia
and the bins of secondhand courage,
there’s a single wooden crate
guarded like a secret.

Inside:
curiosity.

Not much of it;
just a few odd‑shaped pieces,
glowing faintly,
warm to the touch,
humming like something
that wants to grow.

People pass it by.
Too strange.
Too unruly.
Too likely to change them.

But the vendor watches you linger,
tilts their head,
and says softly,
“This one doesn’t keep.
You have to take it home
and let it lead you.”

And you do,
because something in you knows
that the rarest fruit
is the one that refuses
to stay still.