Forever Chasing Fireflies

via pixabay.com

A still heat lingers above the long grass in the yard as the kids run barefoot after fireflies. Darting streaks of light in the deepening dusk. No shirts, no shoes, just shorts that doubled as swim trunks in the afternoon sprinklers. One is young enough for diapers, aimlessly following the older ones across the lawn. Their skin looks as blue as the twilight haze around them, shifting in and out of a doorway to somewhere else.

They examine caught fireflies close to their faces, illuminating dark, curly hair and wide eyes. A smiling beacon through the rift. Then the night grows, and the little lights surround them. They run, laughing, speaking in a secret language of broken words and half imitated phrases. Each child a current in the glowing ocean, conducting the ebb and flow as they pass.

Each one they catch adds to the brilliance bleeding through their clutched fingers. Lanterns to a world ahead, explorers into vast imagination. For a moment they forget the house behind them, the parents inside, the world they were once from. The boarded windows and cracking plaster are long forgotten memories. Now they hold twinkling nonsense in a faraway land.

They gather more and more, plenty for all of them. There is no competition in the land abundant enough to forget greed. The day fades completely, and one by one the bobs of candles in the night snuff out. The more they gather, the harder it is to keep holding, until none are left. They leave back through the portal of the far distant land, only traversable in this moment. Now lights pop out of the dark sky, beyond the reach of the little hands that tried to hold on.

Voices now from the houses behind them and down the dead-end street where cars come and go. They beckon the children back to their reality. Closed faces lit by cigarettes. Stuffy inside, a wash of yellow artificial lights in a room filled with dark corners. The kingdom they are from, where no magic lights appear.

The kids go their separate ways back to the buildings they call home. Each forgetting just how they got to the magical land across space. Where had the road gone that they traveled? Would it return tomorrow? Could they stay this time? All that remains is a stagnant heat sitting over the splitting asphalt still singeing the bottom of their feet.

The oldest turns to go back into his house, tufts of hair hiding the weight in his eyes. On the steps of the porch, where broken glass and rusting rails guide the path, he turns around. The hum of the streetlights fills the empty street on this unmarked summer night. A blackness that seems not to care, darkening the yard, consuming the long grass of the unreachable country.

Then one tiny light burns into view. The child feels every nerve tighten as he almost dashes off the steps to catch it. But he knows. It will vanish before he gets there. The light rising far above him to join the other stars.

Out of reach.