Beyond the Chattering Flush by Mizuki Yamagen

Fiction

Photo by Slava Abramovitch on Unsplash

Here’s how you do it. Sit on the ledge, where the ivy climbs, threading dark green rivulets over the old stone wall. Place your hand here where the slate is firm and constant. See the little dip, where time has carved a shallow bowl? A cup for water when it rains—a cup for your fingers when you lose your grip. Come, sit over here. Just a little wiggle towards the shade. There. Yes, this is the silver birch you can see from the kitchen window. Feel the breeze sweep through its branches, how the leaves flutter like starling wings, murmurations quivering over your head. Notice how its limbs undulate, up and then the little swooping curve, see how it matches the wave of the hill right there, like a reverberation. Yes, that’s something like an echo. Now look, out towards the horizon that way—no, you can’t see it anymore, but remember where it used to be, just beyond the last row of cypress and between the alder and the dogwood—the patch of blue, the undeniable sea? Well, no, it’s still there, over beyond the new developments and the new roads and the new roofs. Further still, yes, that’s where your grandfather is buried. Your grandmother, too. Hmm? Yes, maybe one day I will be there, too. Not for a while though, don’t worry. Keep going, see there, the streets are starting to get sandy. The shore will never stay put. Yes, they seem to be building another sort of resort over there. Is the beach falling into the sea? True, a little bit, each year. But that’s never stopped anybody. And even then, the sea will still be there. Of course, the sea doesn’t just go away. Place your hand here and listen. Even if you can’t see it, it’s always there. Listen closer. The chattering flush of construction, static of rubber on pavement, rushing echo of the hill, birds mid-flight, wind in the leaves, the insects whining, voices of people on the way somewhere, always going somewhere—but hush, listen, closer, yes,

there. That is your heart.

Now, close your eyes and remember. That is the sea.

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Author's Note:

I am often guilty of being spun up in the digital and real chaos in the world. My two dogs remind me to put my phone and my whirling mind down. We all like to sit, lie, or roll around in the wildflower landscape of our backyard and listen to the bees, crickets, frogs, birds, the wind, the thunder in the sky. They remind me to breathe and find joy in existing in this wondrous place together. 

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Mizuki is a writer from Japan, living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Mizuki’s writing has appeared in or is forthcoming at SmokeLong Quarterly, The Forge, Lost Balloon, Flash Frog, Your Impossible Voice, Frazzled Lit, Bath Flash Fiction anthology, and elsewhere. Find her at mizukiwrites.carrd.co

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