The Colors of Flowers and the Heart. Droplets of the Blue Sky.

Squinting against the midsummer-like sun, I was heading toward the water pavilion after passing through the gate of a small shrine when something fluttered across my path.
When I looked up, a swallowtail butterfly with magnificent patterns was swimming its wings against the backdrop of the clear, vast sky. As I stood mesmerized by its graceful dance, I felt as if time had stopped for a moment within the quiet shrine grounds, but of course, that was merely my imagination; I was brought back to reality when I caught sight of someone tending to the garden in the back of the shrine office.

After finishing my prayers, I stood by the main hall and noticed hydrangeas in bloom, so I walked toward them.
Watching flowers of different colors blooming side by side, I could not help but ponder the mystery of how each one exists in that place in its own unique way.

As I enjoyed the colors of the flowers and greenery as if placing paint on the palette of my heart, the words, "I think you should express yourself more," suddenly echoed in my ears.

That was something said to me during a work interview a few days ago, and the words were not new to me; they were familiar ones that various people had said to me since I was a child. I understand that they are meant as advice, but whenever I hear them, I cannot help but feel my spirits sink.

I am seized by the thought of why it is not permitted for me to simply exist there as myself, and by the emptiness of feeling that there is no such "self" that I can express.

Perhaps it is because there was a long period in my life when I did not know what I liked, but even now, I am sometimes swept away by a wave of feeling that the contents of the person I am are hollow and empty, triggered by the most trivial things.

The light bordering the clouds at dusk, a collection of poems that makes me feel as if a breeze is blowing through just by opening the pages, the softening of my heart like a flower blooming at the moment I fall into a dream, the surface of coffee shimmering under amber lighting.

The things I like or that move my heart are all very modest. And not much time has passed since I realized that I liked such things.
I have never been good at handing over my thoughts on things that fade away as fleetingly as morning dew or wind-blown snow to someone else; the moment I put them into words, the feelings in my chest change their shape like drifting clouds.

Being moved by modest things is two sides of the same coin as being easily hurt by small things, and the younger me could not forgive that. Rather than not being able to forgive it, I could not handle the fluctuations of my heart myself, so I convinced myself that I had to become stronger and not get hurt, and gradually I began to wear a thick, heavy suit of armor.

After many years had passed, when I could no longer bear the weight of the armor and took it all off, I felt that nothing remained inside me, and I do not think I will ever forget the depth of the bottomless darkness I touched at that very moment.

I close my eyes and picture the color of the hydrangeas that were bathed in the sun, and I offer that color like a lamp to my past self who is staring into the darkness.

It is not true that there is nothing.
There is a heart that is swayed by this color.

It took an astonishingly long time until I could think that way. Even that thought is not something solid, but something that would disappear with just the slightest breeze.

Even so, even if I am swept away by the wave of "nothingness" and carried out to the open sea, I can now return to the shore.

Standing on the shore, I pick up shells coated in iridescent colors or stones with deep colors like layers of lacquer, and as if holding them up to the sunlight, I write down the sparkle of the scenes I see and the things that have captured my heart.
Since learning that the things I have engraved in my heart in such a way become light and illuminate dark places, I suppose I have become able to see the path home.

Not everything becomes bright.
There are blank spaces and parts that remind me of a pitch-black night, but those are also important parts of myself.
And I believe that every person has within their heart countless colors that emerge naturally, like flowers.

What can be drawn with those colors, and what I want to draw—I am sure I have yet to find the answer to that.

Thinking that far, I take a breath, enter the kitchen, and open the drawer of the dish cupboard.
The first thing that catches my eye is a round chopstick rest I bought just a few days ago, which looks like a droplet of the blue sky.
As I hold it in my palm and gaze at its color, I feel a transparent light spreading within my heart.