Three years and one day

Exactly three years and one day ago I arrived at Stratford Station in East London with one backpack, couple of hundreds pounds in my pocket and thousands of fears in my head. The London I used to know from postcards seemed as far as my mum left on the staircase of our small town house by the highway between Warsaw and Berlin or my friend left behind the gate of the Tocumen airport. This time, it was supposed to be my home. With a Turkish supermarket in Leytonstone with freshly baked pita every morning and cheesy mosaics of Alfred Hitchcock's movies at the tube station. 

 Later I can see A. in the middle of Covent Garden as I saw him for the first time. That day changed my life. 

 I see Thinkersoup by the table eating a turkey leg while reading a book, and Agnes in her cabin crew uniform. She asked me to get her a Red Bull on my way back home and that's still what I'm doing when I want to feel more home than usual. Mr Charming's laughter on the staircase, Vincenzo with his fancy pasta and packs of lavazza, The Guy I Lived With in his pyjamas. It was just the beginning of the amazing characters I was about to meet, places I was about to see, adventures happened on the way still yet to believe it was true. 

 And then, it was Monkey Seduction. My first steps in writing in English, erasing my past away from my mind, first readers, first times for the first time. First love and then the second, then the third one, all more or less relevant leaving with tons of poems written for them under the impression of the moment. First short stories written till the end, meeting Terry Pratchett on the red light. University. 

 A restaurant in Stratford with cheap but fine Chinese food, hidden from the eyes of pedestrians and the top floor of Westfield where Ms Adorable used to work. 

 One long street in Hackney leading to Victoria Park and Palm Tree pub in Mile End. Cheap fries after midnight and pagoda in Battersea Park. The graffiti portraying a scared little girl by Brick Lane, long time gone. 

 London Eye by night. Walks along the Thames until Shakespeare's Globe. Baker Street with lost spirit of Sherlock Holmes pointing you the way.

 And love. Lots of love to all of you, those whom I didn't mention but about whom I would never forget, Love to you, Love to London, Love to those who read it and those who won't find the time, to those who enchanted this time even for a little while. 

 I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. Love to you.