A green light, and then it fades.
Jack Hartley
I used to know a girl who’d crush lightning bugs, swipe their shine over her fingernails for free glow-in-the-dark polish.
And now I think about how before that, before I knew cruelty, her pulling the wings off and the tension before they’d pop, I spoke to one. In the little grove by Nana’s house, in the quiet, in the farthest spot from the house where I was still allowed to go and which felt like miles to small feet, me, an adventurer, a ranger, a map-maker – on the big rock. Big like mythically. Like you have to imagine the mountain it fell from, the shake of the ground when it hit. But by the time I knew it, it was still, and on it, a speck, that firefly, blinking, wings shut. In the moment, I knew something was wrong. I think. In the moment, that early dusk, the glow was barely enough to catch the eye.
I leaned in close to him, hands flat on the stone, cheek pressed to the rough. I breathed in the cold as it came like a fog. He didn’t fly off. Another sign; I think I knew it then. Only just.
I must have, because I stayed. I kept my stance tip-toe, up with my weight resting on Big Rock, hand cradling the air around him. Like I knew he shouldn’t be alone. I told him about my adventures – what I’d seen. The rotting boards of a structure I used like a jungle gym, soft and sagging, which made me feel brave; the deep dip of creek I avoided for its reminiscence to Bridge to Terabithia, but coveted for the same reason; all the exotic animals I’d spirited to Nana that day, one-by-one as she sat on the porch sipping tea listening to me rambling facts, before setting them free again. Now I think about how I talked until his light stopped blinking, and sat for minutes after in the swallowing dark, until the dusk settled in and I had to retreat for bedtime.
Jack Hartley(@jackpollyharts) is a writer, poet, and mourner of his once-fearless love for lightning bugs. (He now admires them from afar.) His work can be found in perhappened mag, Stone of Madness Press, Wine Cellar Press, and other lovely places.
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