Assistant Editor Kate Jayroe: This meditative eco-miCRo asks us to slow down and be present, to wholly witness the end of liminality. Taking the form of a transcript, Bossé’s focal scope reframes our sensory expectations and unveils an incredible close-up of the natural landscape.
Listen to Bossé read the piece:
The Eco-Audiologist, After Hearing
Static, then:
The Silent Morning came. It wasn’t great so much as crystalline, compact enough to crush inside the snailshell of your clenching knuckles.
We’d been listening for years. Noting the yelp of a listless frog, the click of a bat about to fall in flight.
When the Nothing started speaking, we felt we should’ve heard it sooner.
We worked asynchronously: toting recorders to what we saw as center and letting them settle before returning to collect their symphony.
We didn’t hear it first.
Instead, the Watchers saw it. The warp of a weaver ant wilting in an untied knot. A falter in the stomp of a stingless bee.
We touched our earlobes to the ground. We waited for a rumble.
We didn’t think to note the Nothing that came next. Quiet. Even we who yearned to let the ether rattle through our ear canals didn’t recognize the spoken name of death ringing from between the trees, pealing from the petals of a flower.
It was a silent time. Our ears unrung. The plastic slapping silly on the shore, a nearly whiteless noise.
For the return of the Loud, we learned to Quiet. Switched off and on machines. Asked questions of those who had been hearing Nothing the longest, whose feet and fingertips felt the frequency return in increments.
One day, we watched as they entered, Unhearing the morning. As they adjusted grip and fit and let the frequency fly from wing and shriek and flutter. As it entered their ears and sang from the new place inside of them.
We watched as they tallied the talking of all things breathing, being, calling out for one another.
We listened to the swishing of their hands through the air in front of their chests, signaling what wasn’t, what was, the places where something might speak but now could not.
We’re still learning to mind the gaps in presence, to note the place in the Unhearing where our minds can simply rest.
The world wasn’t meant to open but to fill, to speak voiceless and raving in every range of every ear and tongue and horn.
So we listen for the Empty. We tap and track and try to work toward Full.
End Transcript.
Haley Bossé (they/them) believes that our queerness and transness save us. If you enjoyed this micro, please visit Paranoid Tree to read its sibling piece, “Interview w/the Recomposition Technician.” Haley’s first chapbook, Aurora Comes Online, is forthcoming from Game Over Books. Find Haley on Bluesky at @talkinghyphae.bsky.social.
