Lampyridae // Chloe N. Clark

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.