The USA Prize for this year’s Writing Competition was awarded to Tina deBellegarde for her poem “Sound Travels”. The judges appreciated the timely quality of this piece. For many, the telephone is now the only way to visit with friends and family members. There is a genuinely heartfelt, wistful longing to this writing. Kyoto’s sounds are portrayed in a refreshing and lively way, and the reader can imagine that they are also on the telephone, accompanying their loved one on a walk around the city.

Sound Travels

7,000 miles.
Unbridgeable this year.
I content myself with his phone calls.

His morning. My evening.
We share a yawn
as my ears follow him out his front door.

Ohayou gozaimasu.
I overhear my son say through the line.
His landlady swooshes her broom in response.

He stops at his favorite café.
Jazz competes with muffled chatter
and the squeal of steamed milk.

The wind rustles the trees.
It’s snowing sakura petals, he says.
I close my eyes to see.

A bicycle bell trills at the intersection.
Now empty of tourists.
The chirp accompanies his crossing.

Through the temple grounds.
A clang. Then two claps.
I imagine a bowed head.

He coos to a cat in a narrow alley.
It turns, then scoots ahead.
Paws on pavement silent to us both.

The kamo rushes past him.
An egret lands. It waits, watching for its dinner.
My son narrates in the silence.

Two girls walk by,
Chatting.
The high note of a giggle.

Are they flirting with him?
They press together in a whisper,
Their voices lost to the current.

My morning. His evening.
It begins to rain. He opens his umbrella.
The patter louder now as it hits the dome above his head.

I wish you could see this, he whispers.
A Maiko slips out of a building,
a package cupped in her hands.

Doors swoosh. He enters the combini.
The sing song Irasshaimase.
He pays with the drop of coins.

Konbanwa.
to his landlady once again.
I envision his silent bow.

The elevator door slides shut.
Halfway across the planet
I briefly lose the connection. Silence.

His keys jangle, his front door squeaks.
With the clang of the closing door,
We leave behind the sounds of Kyoto.

Slip, slip.
His shoes are off.
Tadaima.

Tina deBellegarde’s debut novel, Winter Witness, is nominated for the 2020 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her story “Tokyo Stranger” appears alongside stories by celebrated authors in the Mystery Writers of America anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town. Tina lives in New York and travels to Kyoto regularly to visit her son Alessandro. Please visit www.tinadebellegarde.com