Late Summer
“I don’t care any more about what anyone says is true, and I can’t even hear the cicadas. Late summer must be cool, and even my voice can’t be heard.”
This summer was terribly hot, like a season in which autumn would never come again. That city was laid out radially, and you could always reach wherever you were going through the shade. But to reach that café, there was a long wait at a traffic light where no shade fell, and even those few minutes were unbearable. And in a house with barely any air conditioning, even sleeping wasn’t easy.
Even here, where I was supposed to have escaped to, there was nowhere to escape.
This city is cut at right angles. There are places where no shade falls, but inside the room it is as cold as the deep sea. The evening sun entered the little room with no furniture. The light through the window burned my eyelids, and whenever I closed my eyes, there was green where no green should have been. But more than that, the roar distorted the outline of my body like heat. They cried without stopping, as if every one of them were saying the right thing. What carries their voices all the way here? “It’s so noisy. I can complain all I like about them ringing through this little room, but no one can hear me. And even if they could, I suppose my voice is no different from the cicadas’.” It felt more like a joke than resignation, and I almost laughed, but the unfinished self-portrait did not move at all and looked at me.
“In all this noise, I can’t tell where my body is. Someone once said to me, ‘Nothing’s going to change just because you keep saying it’s hot, it’s hot. Why do you complain about it all the time? You’re making me feel even hotter.’ It isn’t hot now, though. Just really noisy.”
I dived deep into the sea to escape their voices, down to where I could no longer see even the light floating on the surface.
Still, their voices flowed through the water.
“It’s the same wherever I am. Then, as far away as possible.”
As long as there was still green, it didn’t feel far away yet.
“I suppose all I can do now is hide inside a whale’s belly and wait.”
It must be cool in there. My body wouldn’t even feel the sea moving. Quiet, and dark. Whenever my body moved a little, I could hear only my bones creaking.
But eventually I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
To take a breath, I would have to get out of that big fish and rise to the surface. And even if I made it above the water, could I take in enough air in this high summer, hot enough to evaporate even the sea?
Even the cicadas’ voices could no longer reach into a roomful of deep sea.
“Where did those voices that distorted my body go? I didn’t want to hear something as unchanging as summer ending and autumn coming. I wish my voice could shake the sea even here at the bottom of this deep sea, and flow away somewhere.”
This summer was terribly hot, like a season in which autumn would now never come again.
In the narrow deep sea, even the faint green behind my eyelids had left. It only shook the small room after dark, then disappeared into the deep sea.