After summer loosens its grip, the wind chime under the eaves closes its tiny mouth. In the cooled night air, the clear glass still holds a faint scent of heat. I am the kind of person who listens to its last note each year. Lately I’ve had more days when I can’t smile well, more moments when my spirit feels frayed—yet for a single chime I can still stop and breathe.
At the end of August, the wind grows a little indifferent. Cicadas thin out, evening light tilts earlier. The chime wants to sway, but it seems to know the breezes that used to lift it won’t come for a while, so it grows quiet. Its tongue no longer reaches for the sky. But quiet is not defeat. For a wind chime, the season of silence is a season of waiting.
The months arrive like soft sighs. September rain taps the roof, October changes the town’s smell, winter tightens cold around my wrists. The chime is taken down, placed in a box, carried to the back of a dark closet. There—she, because I can’t help calling her that—sleeps with only the memory of sound in her glass. She will cross winter, cross dusty spring winds, cross the damp of the rainy season, and wait for summer air to return.
I am the same. There are seasons when my heart won’t ring. Everything feels dull, my outline fades. I used to blame myself for being silent. But the chime never apologizes for its quiet. It simply waits. Waiting clears the glass; waiting deepens the note.
The closet’s darkness is the opposite side of summer: cool, still, time moving slowly. Yet that stillness prepares a new resonance. Maybe my tired heart needs such a place too. I don’t have to shine now. I don’t have to ring for anyone. I can rest in my box, steady my breath.
One day heat returns, windows open, a breeze slips through. The chime will sing once like saying “I’m home.” I want to be someone who can hear it—someone who carries the silent seasons whole and walks back into light. Waiting is not weakness. It is a gentle rehearsal for the next sound.
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