Beware the Fireflies

photo by louistib.

He didn’t know anything about writing anymore. He hardly even read. So why did he sit down every morning at the laptop and pretend like he was going to write? Foolishly optimistic. Maybe he could just stream-of-consciousness write:

No matter what, whoever you may be and wherever you go, you will find little monsters hidden in the brush. Green emerald glossy eyes with sparks shooting from them when they see you stumble into the grove. The smoking embers of last night’s bonfire still curl skyward, unstirred by wind or bird’s wing or buzz of insects. He falls to the weeds near the ashes, lies on his back, looks skyward and watches the slow stream of smoke dissipate into the dirty blue, and remembers.

We piled up pillows at the bottom of the staircase and jumped. That wondrous sensation of falling from the sky and landing gracefully in a mound of silk pillows imported from the Orient. The darkness that fell when you closed your eyes, and the warmth when you reached out blindly with your hand and took hold of your friend’s arm to pull you up, there in the pillows with you, her eyes also closed and the sound of her playful giggling in your years, and you fall back into greater darkness as the memory fades.

There. A pinprick of light in the black velvet curtain. Help him. Pull him out of it with a yank on the arm, maybe even something whispered in his ear. He won’t look, won’t open his eyes, won’t betray with blush in his cheeks, but you will feel it against his chest, the rapid drumming of his heart in its cage. Shit, cliché’s come out after dark like fireflies, so pretty, so tempting to chase out across the fields.