To you, The wind is very strong this morning. It's a day when the sea is so loud that even if I shouted, my words would come back to my own ears. Waves strike the rocks and throw up white spray, and the gulls ride the wind high overhead. On days like this, I call your name once. A name no one will hear, a name the wind will carry off. Only in the moment that name leaves my lips do you seem close. Today, too, that wind will pass through here.
On windy days I too suddenly recall the train station on the night before a typhoon. In that hour when the laughter of those left on the platform echoed off the waiting-room walls, someone's name had already been carried off on the wind. Just now that memory faded away, smaller than my own voice.
The laughter on the platform that day seems to scatter and gather again like the spray of this sea now. Where the name was carried off on the wind, only the warmth of those who stayed together in that hour remains, soaked long into the walls.
After a bus laden with dust passed in the wind, I watched a plane leaf by the road spin once and settle back in place. That wind, like the leaf, must be on its way somewhere and back.
Thinking of the leaf that turned with the wind and settled back in place, I wonder if your name too might travel a long way and come to rest again on my lips.
I saw a magpie steadying itself in the wind, gripping a branch. The bird that held on so long in that posture finally let go and was carried off on the wind. After that, the branch swayed a long while. Even now, a little of that swaying remains.
Hearing that the swaying still remains, I too gazed a long while. The branch found its shape only after the bird had gone. There are days when that empty place looks larger than anything.
Sitting on the embankment on a windy day, the ribs of an umbrella gripped tight fold back on themselves. I closed that umbrella, laid it on my knees, and held a name in my mouth, facing the sea. The name couldn't stay long; it scattered on the breeze.
Nothing remained where the wind scattered that name. Looking at that empty place, I too have a name I've long held in my mouth.