The Silence of Cicadas
Drifting from the temple, they don’t speak. A woman in a pink sari smiles continuously. ‘I’m in silence’ reads the label stuck to her blouse. One man looks shocked and dazed. We use a perfunctory language of facial expressions and gestures. They want chai. I take their money, conscious of the rattle of the till and clink of coins which puncture the wordless air. They spread around the café on their own and stare, still startled by mental ghosts that visit them in the quiet. Time spreads out long and deep before the bell tolls, and they float away up the hill, leaving me with myself and the whir of twilight cicadas.
Megan Anning is an Australian writer who is fascinated by Bohemianism and the romantic idea of the ‘starving artist’. Her stories and poetry often incorporate intertextuality and have appeared or are forthcoming in Text Journal, FIVE:2:ONE, October Hill Magazine, The Citron Review, The Closed Eye Open, The Dope Fiend Daily, The West End Magazine, Burningwood Literary Journal and Sudo Journal. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is completing her first novel as part of her PhD at Griffith University, Queensland. These three flash fiction pieces are drawn from life.