Semi no uta

Cicadas’ song

She opens her eyes, blinks once or twice to clear the dream from her mind.  It slips away as she comes awake.

The room is already warm.  Not hot yet, but it will get there soon.  Sun streams through the frosted glass of the windows even though it isn’t even six yet.

The drone of the cicadas laps in waves against the glass.  Ebbing louder and softer.  She smiles.

She knows it will cost her the precious coolness held over from running the aircon last night, but she can’t help it.  She opens the window.

The sound is nearly deafening, a wall of solid noise.  She closes her eyes and lets it wash over her.

She soaks it all up.  The sun, hot on her cheeks, heating up the pink places it had been working on burning the previous day.  The overwhelming ocean of buzzing from cicadas hidden in the trees outside her window.  Despite its ferocity, the sound calms her, like sticking her head under the shower on full blast, the roar drowning out the rest of the world.  IT is the sound of summer.  Of childhood in a far away place and a far away time.

She opens her eyes.  The sky is perfect robin’s egg blue.  Darker at the apex and fading just slightly as it touches the dark green mountains that hide the horizon.  For now, there are no clouds.  But they will come, as the day goes on.  Fluffy white clouds, like the ones in children’s books.  So much cotton building and coming together to create a towering white pillar of fluff by the afternoon.  Mounds of white against the soft blue.

Sweat is already rising on her lower back.  She can feel it in her hairline as the sun prickles the tender skin.  On her arms, resting against the windowsill.  Still she hesitates, unwilling to close the window, turn on the aircon, and ruin the magic of the cicadas’ song.

The heat, the noise – they wrap around her, filling her with happiness – the simple happiness of a child on the first day of summer vacation.  The simple happiness of being alive.