Lampyridae

Fireflies in different areas

have different colors

so your fireflies

were never the same as mine

though I never told you that

I kept it like a secret

I texted you one night

that I’d walked outside

and the sky was alive

with light

you told me to take a video

but my phone only

captured the dark

You said you missed fireflies

how you used to catch

them in cupped hands

as a kid

they flickered in and out

lit up your palm lines

I said, maybe they

were reading your fortune

In some places, fireflies

can synchronize their glows

playing patterns to find

lovers en masse

I told you that fireflies

light up to find mates

blink patterns of

I’m waiting for you

to find me

I told you that because fireflies

use their own light to produce

they are dying out because

of all the ways we fill our nights

with brightness

I said I used to believe

fireflies didn’t die, they just

flew too high and turned into stars

you asked me what I believed

in now

but I couldn’t answer

without asking what color

your fireflies were

Chloe N. Clark's poems and fiction appear in Apex, Future Fire, Little Fiction, Uncanny, and more. She is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph, writes for Nerds of a Feather, and teaches at Iowa State University. Her debut chapbook, The Science of Unvanishing Objects, is out and she can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes.

Image by tsaiian

#vol7 #poetry #chloenclark #fireflies