The Day After

Sunday I went to church, and then I went to Warsaw to wreak pain and suffering.
The next morning was gray and drizzly, and I was lost and spent. I first took the tram the opposite direction, away from the centre, until a spot between the highway and the airfield gave me comfort. Some Poles had been shot there, the tarmac runway disappeared silently into the mist.
The Palace of Culture, too, was veiled in clouds. I spent the day at university library, a wonderful building with wet gardens and cracking snails covering the roof, overlooking the lazy Vistula creeping underneath a colourless sky.
That evening I walked along the bank and up into the old town; the market square; the terrace overlooking the river, the eastern suburbs. I stood watching for some time.
A Monday night with not much going on and even that about to close. Castle Sqare empty, the tourists gone, only the locals and me. And I felt I had finally arrived in this place, but I was alone and might be seeing it for the last time. Newcastle August 2005. An end in many things.
But no point brooding. A bus went down to the Pavilions.
And there I was again, ending the day in a pub alone, my backpack marking me the fleeting stranger, like so many times before. Free but also alone, aghast what I had done.