Though we moved into our gut-renovated home in mid-May, we are still a long way from being completely moved in. The pace has unraveled and the loose ends are the ones hardest to tie up and tuck away. (Lamps to hang, switches to rewire, walls to repaint, a swatch of oiled floor in need of a redo, a drain cover to replace, a doorknob to mount, curtains to hem—and the fabric has not even been selected.)

Outside our windows, a construction site roars to life every day at seven o’clock in the morning. The noise and dust are tedious and unbearable in turns. But the screams of heavy machinery and the crane’s in-your-face arc are a fitting witness to our own unfinished, unsettled construction.

But then evening comes, quiet settles in, birds take charge, Anker falls asleep. And home feels like home again. Maybe it even feel that way for the first time ever.

Photo taken by the author on June 25, 2016, at 20:47 in the evening in Warsaw’s Mokotów with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT fitted with the 200mm/f2.8 L-series lens.