The Street

The café on the corner of my street changed owners twice in the last three years. The first time it became somewhere that served eggs twelve ways and had menus in English only. The second time it became a bar that plays music I can't identify until midnight, which I know because of my bedroom window.

I'm aware that this is how cities work. Things close, things open, the composition shifts. I read about Kraków in the nineteenth century sometimes — the buildings I walk past every day, what they were then — and the rate of change now is not unusual by any historical measure. I know this.

My neighbour Mrs Kwiatkowska is eighty-seven and has lived in her flat since 1959. She remembers when the whole street smelled of bread from the bakery that is now a phone repair shop. She mentions it occasionally, not bitterly, just as information. A measurement of distance.

I wonder what I'll remember when I'm her age. Probably the café that served eggs twelve ways, and thinking that was the beginning of something.

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