Marta Owczarek - Inner Circle

I step out of my house
The sun is shining
Like it was screaming
Screaming with joy!
The light is sharp and crisp and I take off my sunglasses,
Big, red, bought in Camden, 4 pounds,
So I can look directly at it,
So it can blind me.
I like looking at the white planes that go crossing the piercing vivid blue sky
Above the theatre,
Above the Lord Palmerston,
And the red cranes you can see from the foot of Drummond Street, walking from Euston,
(They become red stars at night.)
Round that area there’s secret almost-garden passages and heavy gates,
There’s this one opposite Costcutter
(Where, sometimes, you can get free pastries)
Which says ‘George Mews’ in spidery letters, and it looks very nice,
Even though I have no idea what mews are.
There’s Polish food at Costcutter, and I hear Polish spoken in the street every day,
And most of the time, for a change, it doesn’t bother me,
I’m hidden behind my sunglasses,
Black, huge, square-ish, 1 or 2 euros on a flea market in Amsterdam.
The wind always slaps me in the face as I slide from round the corner,
passing builders drinking their breakfast outside Sainsbury’s;
The big crossing of Euston Road and Tottenham Court is for some reason extremely endearing
Rob says it’s because it’s a big open space, so it reminds you of vastness and hills
Even though it’s not particularly beautiful in itself.
It’s sunny and warm,
Even though it’s September,
Even though it’s October,
Even though it’s November
And even though the cursed November is over,
And nous sommes December 1st today,
I step outside, it was bright and sunny all morning,
And now there’s little grey clouds walking about, I notice without much annoyance through my sunglasses,
Green, Wayfarer-shaped, from Decathlon, genuinely second-hand from a friend,
And suddenly it rains,
It’s short and quite intense, like someone for a minute turned on the shower,
But the sky above the Lord Palmerston is clear,
And I can still see the white plane
As I wait for the 29,
My favourite bus in the world,
That takes me up to Camden,
Up Camden Road,
Which feels like travelling in time,
All the buildings around here are from the 70s.
There’s people having lunch outside,
On shaky little tables outside a restaurant,
Like this was a Mediterranean boulevard,
But it’s Camden Road,
But it’s December.
A woman gets on the bus and she knows the man sitting next to me,
So we switch, smiling.
Unless I get distracted,
Like that one time the little black kid was making funny faces at me,
And talking to me, play-like,
Until his mum pulled his ear and yelled at him;
Unless I get distracted, I press the button as we pass Carpet Right,
I get to the impossibly heavy gate, which by day is open.
I see the sad trees and grey buildings, and it makes me happy, in a very distinctly fall-ish way.
There’s a street going directly from the campus, barred by another gate,
that looks like a fairytale street,
It’s small and magic,
Like for little people,
And there’s always leaves on the ground.
Taking off my sunglasses
White, Versace, with big fuck off silver medusas on the sides, 83 euros,
I think, and ask myself: why did I come all this way?
Because I love this city,
Because I love this sun,
And because I love those two.