hometown

Taking advantage of my favorite time of year, I went for a short walk through the street of Radom today. The temperature was low enough for me to hide under my jacket and shawl, but it still resembled the conditions of vegetation. The dusks are more and more grey now, but the trees still green; the black birds before the evening make circles over the town; the gloves bought in a small shop, dug out from among summer hats. The town seems apologetic, old buildings with the bales of fabrics or children's footwear now somehow smaller, so that one involuntarily bows one's head when getting inside. Some traces of former greatness: emerald door with elliptical window panes leads to empty, abandoned yard that died while still living. From behind a window so low that one could kneel down on the sill, appears a faded display of old purses and belts – here a peltmonger used to work. Tiny single stories packed in contorted houses, their side walls stuck with the neighbor's.
These pictures overlap together with my childhood memories, clear as photographs, seen from the point of view of a small girl, whom it all doesn't concern yet, nonetheless she feels some kind of fear of these streets. Tall mother in red pumps, father's grey coat – my micro world.
The frames skip and here I am, without a flat in Radom, one step before my second year in Warsaw; Miss Marta with a purse and a calendar full of worries.
And so on.