Words: Tara Jackson (she/her)
Beside my house there is a pond, and the pond is surrounded by stones, and these stones are covered in brown moss. You can spend hours observing the newts and tadpoles in the spring, and water boatmen and flies in the summer. On certain evenings, when the sun scrapes the horizon, a quartz eye may glint at you from its mangled mossy socket.
One night there was a splash. I awoke from my dreaming. It was not the splash that woke me, but the sudden disappearance of all other sound.
Roof slates which usually groaned above my head in the plummeting temperatures now stood still. Owls made no calls from their nests. And missing beneath it all was the churning tidal waters of the loch. For a moment I lay there, afraid that if I moved, my body would melt and dark liquid would spill from my eyes and throat . . .
silence settled upon my chest like a ripple without a
centre
Once feeling returned to my stagnant limbs I went outside, noticing as I went how the steps did not creak beneath my body weight, and how our cherry blossom tree refused to rustle in the deadness of the air. Gone was the veil of noise which reminded me who and where I was. Everything was unfamiliar, like it is when we are children, or freshly in love, or in crisis, and events as small as water dripping from a holly leaf can alter our mood.
I think our ears must give rhythm and shape to sound just as parents give names to their children when they are born. I think everyone would wake up if there was no wind blowing.
Ahead of me I saw moonlight bouncing from the ripples on the pond. My body started forward, aware that the world was suddenly brimming with texture and meaning. I covered the distance in a few simple steps, anticipating the solemn crunch of the patio pebbles beneath the soles of my feet. I craned my neck over the edge
and looked down just
as the last ripple
settled on its
surface
