Published in The Blue Journal
I didn't plan to think nothing. It just happened. Or rather, the wind took the thoughts away before they could land.
The prayer flags were strung across a slope above the village—faded, frayed at the edges, snapping in the thin Himalayan air. Five colors. Blue, white, red, green, yellow. Each one printed with syllables I can't read but understand anyway. The wind reads them for you. Every flutter is a recitation. Every gust, a prayer completed.
I sat on a stone warmed by the afternoon sun. My back against an old wall. The valley opened in front of me like a question no one was asking out loud.
On my wrist, a turquoise bracelet. I didn't look at it much. But every now and then it pressed lightly against my wrist bone—a small reminder. You are here. You haven't left.
The first hour, I tried to think. A new batch of stones had arrived. One custom order had the wrong wrist size. I should call the artisan. I should plan the next collection. I should—
The wind took each thought as it formed. Carried it down into the valley. Let it dissolve into the haze.
The second hour, I started listening. Not to my thoughts. To the flags.
Blue snapped sharp and clean. White thumped like a heartbeat. Red barely made a sound—it just swelled with the wind, full and silent. Green and yellow moved somewhere in between. Five colors. Five sounds. Like five voices reading the same verse in different tongues.
Blue is sky. White is cloud. Red is fire. Green is water. Yellow is earth. The five elements, stitched onto cotton, doing the only thing they know how to do: move when the wind asks them to.
I wondered if the prayer was in the syllables printed on the cloth, or in the sound of the cloth itself. Maybe the wind doesn't care what's written. Maybe it just blows, and the prayer is in the movement.
The third hour, I let go of even that thought.
I just sat. Just listened. Just breathed. Just felt the turquoise press against my wrist from time to time—not demanding attention, just letting me know it was still there. Still blue. Still quiet.
After three hours, I stood up. Brushed the dust off my pants. Walked down the hill.
There was no epiphany. No sudden clarity. No grand insight to bring back and write down.
But that night, I slept deeper than I had in months. The way a stone sleeps after the wind has been blowing across it all afternoon.
