I took the last tram to the city centre. I’d spent the whole evening stuffing my mouth with vegan burgers and drinking craft beer at BrewDog, watching the shore grow darker while being deafened by screaming seagulls.
Seagulls are very weird creatures.
The Luas was half empty, with some seats already taken by people who looked more like ghosts. A ghost tram, as usual at that late hour.
There was a man asleep, his head bumping against the window. A few ladies, on their way back from a drunken night out, were laughing through hiccups. I was a little jealous of them — of the fact that they were much older than me and still together. Sometimes I see myself as a very old and lonely woman. A very grumpy woman, the kind that fits every stereotype about people from Eastern Europe.
A few teenagers were showing off in front of another group of equally young and immature people.
There was one girl with red eyes who got off at the first stop. Maybe she was running towards the thing that had made her cry earlier. Or maybe she was running away from it. I hope so.
Another girl couldn’t take her eyes off her phone. Her thumbs were moving at the speed of light, trying to get some important message across to someone on the other side of the screen. She got off the tram stumbling, without even looking up.
The man who had spent the entire journey listening to a podcast and staring melancholically out of the window got off at the same stop as me. He was carrying shopping bags and what looked like a change of clothes. Maybe he was only just coming home from a late shift.
On my way home, I took the path that cuts through the park, empty at that hour.
For a moment, I thought about all those people from the tram. But I quickly stopped. We share this city. Sometimes we share the same trams, if only for a moment. Tomorrow, we might share another tram. Or maybe we never will. Strange how many lives can cross paths with yours without ever really touching it.
Dublin city diaries 
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