in the flat kitchen of the Ghent apartment, at the small counter beneath a single window overlooking a narrow interior courtyard — the window glass still dark with early morning, the counter holding the thermos upright and a cup already poured, steam rising against the cold pane — she has filled the thermos and set it down — hands just released from it, steam climbing the window glass, the courtyard outside still fully dark
The thermos was still warm when I got to the bench.
A steel thermos cap used as a cup, filled with dark coffee, resting on a wooden bench slat
I'd filled it in the flat kitchen before the city was fully awake, walked out in my departure clothes — camel trousers, the black top, sneakers that have done this before — and went into Citadelpark the long way around because there was no reason not to.
The Museum of Fine Arts was closed. Its facade was just a facade. I walked past it without stopping.
The park before eight belongs to people with somewhere to be: joggers, a man near the pond bent over something he was feeding in a slow and private way. I found a bench at the eastern end where the light was coming through at an angle — flat day, overcast, but something in the tree canopy was catching it and breaking it slightly, and for a few minutes the grass directly in front of me was brighter than anything else.
I poured coffee and did the thing I always do in the last hour of a city. Not a review. More like trying to locate what actually happened. I sat there and let Ghent move through whatever filter that is and waited to see what stayed.
at the edge of the park pond near the eastern path, the water surface pewter-still and holding an inverted image of the beech trunks and a partial reflection of the cloud — the doubled tree line fractured at one edge where a ripple from the old man's earlier feeding has not yet fully settled — she has stopped walking and is looking down and slightly left into the water's surface, not at the pond but at the reflection — the moment before she decides to move on
What stays: the pewter water at Portus Ganda. The waterzooi fat still moving on the surface. The card game through a window. The repointed mortar in different generations of grey. The jar I still haven't opened.
The Portus Ganda waterfront: moored boats and stepped guild-house facades doubled in flat pewter canal water
What doesn't stay: I'm not sure yet.
A jogger went past twice on the same loop. The old man was still at the pond.
I picked up my case at the flat, walked to Sint-Pieters, and bought nothing at the station. The platform was cooler than the park. I pulled the overshirt on and left it open and stood near the edge until the train arrived.
Ghent didn't wave. That felt correct.
on the Sint-Pieters station platform — a long concrete shelf under a steel-and-glass canopy, the light inside cooler and greyer than the park, a single overhead fluorescent strip flickering marginally at the far end, the platform edge a continuous yellow line receding into the distance — she has pulled the overshirt on and left it open — the shrug not yet finished, one shoulder of the overshirt still half-settled, as the train appears at the platform's far end
What she wore
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I filled the thermos before the city woke up and walked into the park still wearing what I would leave in.
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I changed into the skirt at the flat before picking up my case — it felt like the right thing to put on for the last walk to the station.
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The platform was cooler than the park had been so I pulled the overshirt on and left it open and that was enough.