Present, Korina Szysko-Nicewicz

Present

by Korina Szyszko-Nicewicz

The horizon stretches on, houses upon houses, trees upon trees - the telephone wire extending between them as if splitting them in two. It’s funny, really, how untrue that is. The wire enables a major form of communication; the only thing keeping most people together. The streets are filled with the joyful smiles and boisterous laughter of people meeting friends and savouring their time outside with each other. Shouts and conversations drift down the roads, intertwining with themselves and dancing across the wind.

(“No, Spencer, you can’t just bail on us!” someone laughs. “You promised you’d go once you passed your exam!”

“Could I please have a-”

“Your shirt’s so cute! Where-”) There’s a slight surrealness surrounding the fact that they each have their own lives, troubles, and complexities, but before my thoughts can draw me in, the sun reappears from behind the clouds just barely skimming its surface and reflects across the café tables. The weather is perfect for this time of year and the sky ethereally sunlit.

(“I’ll meet you at the park, yeah?”)

The park’s been there forever, I think, with its trampled grass and scattered dandelions. I’m not really sure. I was never one to go to the park anyways, but one thing’s for certain - it’s full of people nowadays. There’s a child, with their mother pushing them on the swing they’re on, and I watch her startle as they jump, “Mummy, look!”

Their eyes widen at the rustle of a squirrel between the trees, and they run arms outstretched, kicking up burning leaves from underneath their feet, spiralling down and down to touch the floor below.

(“No, Mum, it’s not meant to rain... It’s not winter! I’ll be-”)

The birds by the benches startle at the disturbance; they shake their wings and take off into the sky until they are distant silhouettes seeking refuge. Two, however,

simply perch. They perch on the telephone wire circling the park grounds, at a wary distance from one another. To think that there’s all this space - all the space in the world, almost - and they choose here.

(“The leaves are pretty here this year. How’s the weather in-?”)

I don’t hear them twitter, or chirp, or sing their heavenly songs. They overlook the world, the wire suspending them the only thing keeping them together. Nevertheless, this wire holds people’s lives; the communication they share between loved and lost ones: short phone calls between friends, an odd argument or two. It’s such an indispensable, simple, seemingly insignificant thing, but it means so much to so many.

I think to myself that it’ll be that wire keeping us together in the future, when the crowds start to dwindle from rumours of a pandemic. All of these idyllic scenes will be lost in the wind and in distant memories, when the events that many call ‘inevitable’ happen. The parks will be empty and the roads engulfed by silence, spreading like wildfire and like the disease.

We all seem so carefree now, but if these things are lost like the ever-disappearing birds in the distance, what will happen? I can only imagine the impact that this could have and the things that we’d miss. We’d all be a living metaphor, the personification of ‘you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone’. And what would be gone? The days at café tables, the times when you could laugh freely in the streets, the evenings sitting in a park… we’d all be like those birds, with all the space we could ever dream of, yet forced a stifling distance apart. (“I’ll call you later-”)

The birds take off at the sight of plastic billowing in the wind, and swerve around each other over the heads of the meandering crowd.

The one thing we wouldn’t have lost would be that wire, and yet we would be grateful for it more than ever before. When things start to get rough or people start having less time for each other, it’ll be the thing keeping us connected, keeping us suspended between the limbo of sanity before we ever truly fall.

So that every once in a while, you can call the person you care deeply about and tell them that you love them.

(“Mhm- yeah, no honey- yes, I promise- I’ll be home soon, ok? Love you.”)