Amid the chaos in my mind, I knew that I could not continue my life as it had been. I knew I had to leave. I tried to think of only that. And so, on a terribly gray and cold morning, I went to the Passport Bureau. It was a tall brown building in a side street in the center of the city, not too far from the National Museum, where the strikes had been. I went with trembling hands, pushing away the memory of the night I’d released the flyers, my story assembled in my head. I sat in the cold hall, filling out the forms, strangely aware of my handwriting and, like whenever I had to supply the official data of my life, feeling as if I were lying. The form asked where I was going, for how long and why, and I stuck to my story.

For what felt like days, I sat in the dark and drab halls of the Bureau, on a hard, wooden bench, holding a piece of paper with a number, waiting for it to be my turn.

I sat in the hallway and tried not to cry. I wanted to cease existing. I wanted to un-be. I sat in the hallway and tried not to think of you and me. I tried not to think of us, under the covers of your bed. I tried not to think of your arms or your hands or your eyes. I tried not to think of all the things I had imagined we’d do together—return to our lake next summer, move in together someday. I tried not to think of Hania, and your fingers on her sequined dress. I tried not to think of Maksio or his eyes when he saw us in the forest. I tried not to think of Granny or Professor Mielewicz.

I tried to imagine my life in the future, in a year or so. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t see anything because anything that wasn’t that moment—no, not even that—was beyond me. I started rocking my legs and feet, just to feel something. And then the office closed before my number was called. I left with nothing to show for my time except the flimsy piece of paper whose handwritten number had smudged from my holding it for too long.

I went home. I would get used to it, Pani Kolecka told me. She made us a sparse dinner, buckwheat with pickled cucumbers and beetroot mash, and we ate with the windows open, the cold drifting in, stirring us, the sound of cars rushing past in the streets.

“We’re just queuing for a possibility, queuing for something, maybe queuing for nothing,” she said, smiling her sad and loving smile. “But it will pass, my dear. Even the longest queue dissolves eventually.”