“Beside the Pond” by Corey Bryan

There is a large pond in Grant Park. Beside the pond is a green, wrought iron bench. Half of it is brown now with chipped paint, exposing the metal bone underneath to rust and rain—or some arbitrary scientific term like oxidization. Sitting on it stains the bottom of your pants, your back pockets, with brown or red or somewhere in between. There is one section that is still green where most people sit if anyone chooses to. I sit on it often. The green part, not the red. I don’t do my laundry near enough to sit on that side. 

I don’t know who decided to paint it green. It isn’t green like grass. It isn’t green like leaves. It is an unachievable hue of nature. Something only a human could think up in their imagination—extrapolating the greens of grass and infusing it with some idea of brightness. It is strange, the rusty color of the bench’s legs and slats are closer to the color of the trees. The leaves seem to rust, though I know it can’t be that; it’s instead subjected to some arbitrary scientific term that I don’t know—perhaps, it has something to do with chlorophyll. I can’t remember.

Despite the color, I sit on the bench often. It provides a great view of the fountain. It is so easy to be alone in this world; sometimes, I imagine that at some point in time, a person, a man, with wrinkles in his face, and leathered hands or sun-stained cheeks and hair, will come and sit beside me. Perhaps he will bring a loaf of bread. Perhaps he will have made a sandwich for himself, the crust peeled off, and decided after his first bite that it was too grainy or too dry. So, he brings the rest of the loaf to the park.

He would not say anything to me. He would simply sit. Probably 8-12 inches away. A respectable distance, but not one so far that I would think he was being rude. He would take the yellow, red, or blue twist tie off the bag. He would not be in a hurry. He would do it very deliberately and would take his fingers and twist. Then, he would remove his fingers from the bag, assume the correct position, and twist again. Until, at last, the bag is opened to the crisp fall air.

There would be no ducks around, no birds. He would throw a piece of bread toward the shore, toward the pond. And then birds would appear. I don’t know where they came from. Perhaps from behind me or above. My eyes are focused on the piece of bread, square against the clipped grass. They would sniff. Do birds sniff? I do not know, but I know they are hungry, and they will eat anything they are given—despite the dryness, despite the graininess. They are simply thankful for the brief interaction, the passing of a thought for their well-being in the mind of someone so disparate from them. 

Eventually, when the last piece of bread is tossed—a meal so large I cannot even imagine how many birds it would take to eat it all, the man would stand up and look at me. Again, not saying anything. For some reason I cannot imagine what his voice sounds like, and so I have him not say anything at all. But he casts a look in my direction, and his thoughts arrive in my head. It is too easy to be alone in this world. It is too easy to let a simple thing like rust on a bench prevent you from sharing space with another human. With another person. With another life, separate from yours. I want to believe him.

But he gets up and leaves, and I never see him again. He simply walks home. It is warm inside. He sits down on the couch, maybe cracks a beer and drinks deeply. He sighs, letting out that ahh sound after drinking something so refreshing, you almost can’t help it.

I don’t know why I think of these things. Perhaps it is the disease within me. The loneliness that I lean into. It is easier to imagine love than it is to seek it out. 

So, I don’t.




C.W. Bryan is a student at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta, GA where he writes poetry, nonfiction and short fiction. He is currently writing his weekly series, "Poetry is Plagiarism", with Sam Kilkenny at poetryispretentious.com. His debut chapbook Celine: An Elegy was published with Bottlecap Press in 2023. His first full-length poetry collection, No Bird Lives in my Heart, is forthcoming with In Case of Emergency Press in 2024.