Lampyridae

by Jason Nelson

The storm, wind and wearisome change, galloping sheets overflow. Her fields twisting barns into red boards and shingles scattered in distant branches pouring creeks into cars, past smashed hide-a-beds and what remains of her house foundation. And when the closing rain, this sporadic wet fall stops a nervous glimmer shines. Her neck of land

arched through the broken trees and debris bending up flush and kissed by this cloudless allure. From the soaked field’s lowest place a glow begins. The intermittent lights, at first, are occasional sparks, streaking out and back. Soon thousands, tens by thousands more fireflies are blinking, a dense hollow of stars drawn in by the storm. But their lights, their fluorescent rhythms are static, alike, weak attracting sparks. And despite their hurried attempts and various styles, they cannot escape their sameness, except one. She draws the light in crashes. Even her slightest flutter is ardor. One firefly, caught in the swirls, lost three acres high, searched the thousands below. Their spotting fires dull and diffuse by rain, by the glass case their merging glows create. But beneath this glass corral he finds her flickering asunder, her waning storm. And stopping in flight he falls

close and fast three hundred feet, for the possibility.