Kendall Kartaly
Do you hear it? The fingers traversing—with the sentence still continuing—onto the next page. The soapy dishwater daydreams, in freckles of light, with the slip of a pan. The shifting sun as I see it linger through my kitchen in a way that I have never noticed before. The slow rise sometime in the morning or the slant at noon, reflecting off my desk, light casting both shadows and spotlights—age spots—reminding quietly that presence is key.
For me, being on a different continent, I am in-between the spaces of here and there—home—in Poland and Wisconsin. The beautiful dissonance used to be when I was at my favorite kawiarnia and people greet me with “Cześć” and the sudden lilts of “Holocene” by Bon Iver played, unexpectedly, as the workers were rearranging chleb and sernik at the counter. It used to be in the extra pause when I would fill out a form with "home address.” Now it is in the confusion of messages when people write, “Are you staying here or going back?” “Are you here or still there?” Where exactly?
Yet, I imagine wifi connecting here and there, space and community, like the building of forts that I used to make as a kid. An unexpected smile always came when the makeshift blocks of chair and blankets held. A new space unfurled like the tide, my eyes looking up at the blue blanket, while my legs, unable to fit, dangled back and forth outside, content.
And now, as I walk in the quiet streets of the city to the edge of the Kabaty forest, I close my eyes towards the sky, like my mom used to tell me, and listen to the trees, like crashing waves, transporting me from here to there. I am reminded that trees can sense one another in-between the spaces they give and leave and that is delightfully amazing. Do you see it?
Kendall Kartaly was born and raised in Altoona, Wisconsin and is currently living in Warsaw, Poland. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Secondary Education from Valparaiso University. As a writer and English teacher she sees the power of stories, art, and representation helping the world speak and listen, trying to search and name the “thing” in-between it all.