One quiet summer afternoon,
I was sitting at the edge of my bed,
looking at my phone.
It was hot,
so I had the windows wide open.
But the house was quiet.
Shoooo… shoooo…
I heard something.
What was that?
I looked up.
It was a sound I had never heard before.
It stopped.
I stayed still.
Then it came back again.
And again.
I kept listening.
I wanted to know what it was.
I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I got up
and walked to the living room.
I heard something
I had never heard before.And in that moment,
I began to notice something in me
had started to change.
It Was Not the Sound of Cicadas
I listened to it from the living room.
It wasn’t the sound of cicadas.
What was it?
Insects, maybe?
I walked to the veranda,
leaned slightly out the window,
and looked around.
Outside, everything felt the same as usual.
Then the sound came back,
as if it were moving toward me.
Shoooo…
It was the wind.
Something rose in my chest.
Maybe this would be normal in the countryside.
But this was the city.
Even though there was nature around us,
it was still the middle of the city.
How could a sound like this exist here?
What kind of home was this?
I couldn’t stop wondering about this place.
The Wind Moving Through This Home
Nineteen floors up.
An old apartment,
on the top floor.
There were no footsteps from above,
which I loved.
But in the summer,
it could get unbearably hot.
The veranda in the living room opened wide.
Low buildings stretched out below,
and beyond them,
there were mountains.
To the side.
And behind.
Wind moved down from the mountains
and flowed into the open windows.
The cord of the blinds
swayed lightly,
then stopped.
Then swayed again,
and stopped.
It matched the sound exactly.
It was the wind.
I picked up my phone
and filmed the cord moving.
Then I recorded the sound
and listened to it.
In the living room first.
Then in the bedroom.
I listened again,
comparing the two,
like a child discovering something new.
It Only Existed Here
I wondered
if I could hear the same sound outside.
So I stepped out.
Meeeeh…
Cicadas.
I smiled.
It wasn’t the same.
Not the sound I had heard at home.
I recorded it on my phone
and listened again.
It was different.
I moved to another spot
and recorded again.
Then listened again.
Still different.
I looked around.
People were just passing by,
as usual.
No one seemed to notice.
I went back inside.
Not Everyone Hears the Same Way
Later that evening,
I told my husband about it.
“This house is so strange,” I said.
“I was inside this afternoon,
and I heard the wind.
It came like this—
shooo…
I didn’t know what it was at first,
but it was the wind.”
I kept talking,
wanting to share the feeling I had earlier.
I had been noticing
many small,
strange things about this home.
“That’s just cicadas.”
He said it simply,
as if it didn’t matter.
I stopped.
I didn’t feel hurt.
I didn’t try to explain.
I didn’t insist that I was right.
He just wasn’t interested.
And in that moment,
I realized
something in me had changed.
Something Quietly Began to Change
I used to be just like him.
I wouldn’t have paid attention
to a sound like this.
I would have thought
it was just cicadas.
When I think about it now,
it almost makes me smile.
Almost sixty,
and hearing something
for the very first time.
Recording it here,
then there.
Feeling curious.
Even a little excited.
The old me
might have found it ridiculous.
But I am not the same anymore.
Now,
I pause for things like this.
I notice them.
I let myself feel them.
I sat there quietly
and thought about it.
Something in me had changed.
My senses
had opened again
in this home.
It became the home that changed me.
It wasn’t the wind that appeared.
It was me, finally able to hear it.
It has been six months
since I moved here.
Away from the noise of the city,
into a place
surrounded by mountains.
One afternoon,
a butterfly came to rest
on the balcony railing
of this nineteenth-floor apartment.
It arrived in the daylight.
And it stayed.
Even as the light faded,
it didn’t leave.
Before going to bed,
I saw it still there.
Maybe
it was resting.
By the next morning,
it was gone.
I smiled to myself.
Maybe
it had rested well,
and left.
I didn’t know
a home could do this.
But this one did.
This is how
this home is changing me.
