Monday 17 June 2019

Write-In 2019: 'Seeing the light' by Summer Phillips

“What’s so special? Didn’t you see the pamphlet?”

She stood at the crossroads listening to the audible gasps.

“It’s so…so…blue,” said a lady in a maroon poncho, two but one away from her.

“Come on, it’s changed now,” I said, giving a nudge that, wasn’t quite, but awfully close to, a shove, to the bodies infront of me. It was nearly 8.46am and if I didn’t get across this road soon I’d be late for work, as I had been since they installed the new lights a week last Tuesday and my boss wouldn’t let me have a morning coffee before the daily 3 hour spreadsheet me to death meeting.

“Come on!” I’m getting more impatient.

“I’ll go in a minute,” says a man infront to the left. “I just want to see the blue one more time. It’s so compelling. I’m so happy we are all on foot now.” He looks at me directly which is disconcerting to say the least. People haven’t looked at each other for years. “Aren’t you glad we no longer have cars. Look at all we’d miss.”

“Like these traffic lights?” I ask.

“Yes,” he laughed and snorted at the same time which was utterly disgusting.

Welcome to my overpopulated city. Where people walk everywhere, in droves, and we are too many to sustain. Maybe the blue traffic lights are doing what they tell us they are doing, Green for go, Amber for wait, Red for stop and the new Blue, to go back. Or maybe, just maybe, they are there to make us gaze up in wonder and be so enchanted we begin to talk to one another again. I mean, what kind of messed up idea would that be?



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