This story is part of the literary competition created by In Trieste magazine “Trieste:Rebirth” which was open to all writers living in Trieste.
by Nina Bonsignore
I wake up and the sun outside my windows greets me, warmth trying to filter in through the blinds. It is the first day of real spring. I eat, open my computer and get ready to join a busy meeting. Again. Everyone is talking, each person louder than the next, yet through glitches and bad WiFi, their voices are lost and it turns to loud incomprehensible gibberish. The teacher joins and no one notices, and the class keeps talking, unlike in class, where when a teacher joined we immediately fell silent. The teacher mutes people, cutting them off mid sentence, and the chat dings for every muted person. The lesson takes a while to commence, seeing as only half the people have joined and several people are coming in and out. The teacher struggles for a minute to get everyone to be silent and make sure our microphones are muted and our cameras are on. Only then can we begin. We log on and log off endlessly for the entire duration of the morning until we walk to the kitchen to get a sandwich for lunch, already a headache coming on. We open our computers again, like zombies and click on links until our computers don’t work and neither does our brain. Every day, the same thing, and even though we grew restless of the horrid routine the cycle wouldn’t seem to break until the First Day of Summer. The doors opened and warmth flooded in, we danced in the sun and we felt each other, heard each other’s voices, rejoiced in the arms of loved ones. Was this too good to be true? Would it last? No one knew. But we knew that in this moment of happiness and hope we would have someone else to guide us along the way.
