Where have the fireflies gone?

We are entering summer, that newly discovered territory of humid, sticky nights and ice cream that melts in your hand and fireflies that flirt with the stars.

I miss fireflies. I used to see more of them as a child. I don't know if it's light pollution or pollution-pollution, or what, but I haven't seen them in a while. I've always liked the idea of trapping them in a jar just to watch them light it up, but something about this always seemed cruel to me, too. So I've never done it. Have you?

So I started writing this story today. It's about a boy and a girl and fireflies. :D For once, the story came to me fully formed. This doesn't always happen. My mind is like a halfway home for characters -- they come, get fed and clothed, and then leave and I never hear from them again. But not these two. They walked in, pulled up some chairs and asked how long they could stay.

I hope they stay a while! Here's what I have so far. Please comment with your thoughts -- they're much appreciated.

Fireflies

She turned away from me laughing, her hand reaching up to open a cupboard. We were in her kitchen. The spare light of evening lay in between us like a gossamer blanket. That transparent. That full of possibilities, of stones unturned and doors unopened.

She opened the cupboard, her profile in sharp relief against the raised wood of the cupboard door. She had a classic face with an upturned nose, a delicate jaw, and obsidian eyes that flashed fire whenever she was excited over something. A face made for cameos, made for photographs taken in sepia.

I cupped my face in my hands and just stared, drinking her in. She hummed lightly as she rooted around in the cupboard, a habit of hers whenever she was concentrating. I couldn’t discern the tune and this bothered me, somehow.

“Ah, here it is,” she sighed with satisfaction as she removed a large mason jar from the cupboard.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

She turned towards me with a ready smile. “This is for the fireflies you and I are going to catch tonight.”

"Do you know I've never seen a firefly?"

She closed the cupboard and turned toward me, her wide eyes even wider in her small face. "Really?"

"Yeah. I didn't even know we had them here in Miami."

"Well, you are going to see your first firefly tonight, buster. Just you stick with me."

I felt like telling her I'd stick with her no matter what, to remind her I'd been sticking with her since the seventh grade. But I've learned there are moments you speak up and moments you keep the words inside, hidden, waiting for the day when you'll really need them.

This is not a love story. Let me make that clear. Love stories have definitive beginnings and definitive endings. A plot, a conflict, and a resolution -- the sickly sweet happy ending where our happy couple skips off into the sunset, hand in hand, while the violins thrum madly in the background.

That's not going to happen here. At least, I don't see it happening. Ever. And I'm OK with that. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

But I suppose I should fashion a beginning of sorts, since I still have your attention.

I met Ingrid in the seventh grade. I was the nerd with glasses and the knobby knees and the voice that couldn't decide whether it was treble or baritone. She was the bully with buck teeth and pigtails.

I was down on my knees in the playground, the glasses having been knocked off my face by my friendly classmate Jose. I was blind as a bat's grandmother and couldn't see where my glasses had landed. The next thing I knew, a foot landed in my face and I landed on my back with a breathless "oof!" that sounded somehow comical, like something from a cartoon. Only I wasn't laughing. I was crying. Jose was now on top of me, punching me repeatedly in the nose. There was both dirt and blood in my mouth.

"What's going on here?" came the strident voice I recognized from my third period Social Studies class. It belonged to the girl with buck teeth and pigtails, the one whose hand was perpetually in the air, the one who always had the right answers. The one who cut everyone else in line in the cafeteria and nobody bothered because she was taller than the tallest boy in the whole school. If anything, I was more scared of her than of Jose.

'Why don't you mind your own business, Beaver."

That was the name everyone called her behind her back. This may have been the first time anyone had dared to say it to her face.

"What. Did. You. Just. Say," she said in a menacing voice. I was inching away from Jose, having found my glasses near a bush. I could dimly see that a large crowd was gathering around us, the noiseless hush of their attention gathering more students.

I shoved my glasses back on and winced. The nose was definitely broken. But at least I could see again. And Jose was looking mighty nervous. I watched him gulp and stutter over a response. Watched her hand flash forward and (wonder of wonders) karate chop him. Watched him crumple to the ground in a messy heap.

Watched her head my way, a purposeful look on her face.

Before I could even blink, she was reaching out a hand towards me. I'll admit it -- I flinched. So would have you after having witnessed the Karate Kid in action.

"The name's Ingrid. I think you're in my Science class."

"A-A-Actually, it's Social Studies. And my name is Jack."

"Whatever. It's nice to meet you, Jack."

Her hand was warm in my hand. Her smile was warm, too. I smiled back nervously but then stopped when I realized the action made my face hurt.

"Come on, Jack," she said, still holding on to my hand with a resolute grip. "Let's go get you some ice."

ETA: Thanks to everyone who's commented on this story! I've published it on Protagonize.com and will keep adding to it there. If you'd like to keep up with the story, you can read it here.

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All content on this site is the sole property of Ana Cristina Simon, unless otherwise stated, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Do you remember your first love?

[Names have been changed to protect the innocent! As well as the guilty...]

Do you remember your first love?

I do.

I don't remember the exact age I was when I started having feelings for him in "that way," but I must have been about eleven. His name was Rafael Perez. He lived on the block behind mine, in the neighborhood I moved into when I was eight. He went to the same Catholic private school I went to, Immaculate Conception Elementary. He was in a grade above mine. He had brown hair, crinkly brown eyes. I remember his voice sounded like sandpaper would, if sandpaper had a voice. It was that rough and scratchy on the ears.

I used to love his voice. I remember I would call just to hear his barely baritone "Hello?" then I would hang up, stifling my breathless giggles. (Ah, those halcyon days before Caller ID...)

Raphael, or Ralphy, as he liked to be called, was rough around the edges himself, too. A rebel without a cause with braces and a light spattering of freckles across his nose that mesmerized me. He was on the baseball team and always had at least a dozen girls chasing him. He used to change girlfriends like he changed shirts. One for another, without a thought for anything except his own convenience.

Despite this, I still dreamed I had a chance with him. I remember the pattern to my sleepless nights. I used to switch on my Walkman and play "World in My Eyes" by Depeche Mode with my eyes closed, imagining the perfect scenario: me confessing my feelings to Ralphy, he of course reciprocating.

I invented different versions of our first kiss before it even happened. How he would duck his head carefully, tenderly. How he would cup my face in his hands. I wondered if he would close his eyes. If I would close my eyes.

I prayed and prayed for it to happen. Most of the time though he acted as though I was his annoying little sister. He'd ruffle my hair and I'd secretly thrill at the touch, then bristle when he'd playfully insult me or challenge me to an arm wrestling match. The only time he gave me hope that he might reciprocate my feelings was one summer, the summer that the song "Unchained Melody" had its great resurgence. I don't remember the year -- it must have been the early to mid-1990's.

One sultry summer afternoon, perhaps in July, perhaps in August, I heard a sandpapery voice outside my bedroom window. I looked outside and saw Ralphy riding his bicycle in the middle of the street in front of my house. He was alone, and he was singing "Unchained Melody" at the top of his lungs.

Oh, my love
my darling
I've hungered for your touch
a long lonely time
and time goes by so slowly
and time can do so much
are you still mine ... ?

I still get butterflies, remembering that afternoon. How his voice resembled more a cat being skinned alive than the Righteous Brothers. How fast my pulse raced, threatening to jump clean out of my veins.

"It doesn't mean anything," I told my mom, voice shaky, when she came into my room to laugh with me at his antics. "Oh, it means something," she replied, smiling.

Unfortunately for my eleven-year-old self, nothing ever happened. Ralphy was not fated to be my first kiss. Despite the fact that we wound up going to the same Catholic private high school, too, we moved in different social circles. I joined the Drama Club and the Debate Club. I got good grades. He didn't. He hung out with the bad kids and got a girl pregnant right after he graduated, marrying young.

My family moved out of that neighborhood my senior year of high school. By that time, I had developed other crushes, and even had my first kiss. I graduated from high school and went to college and there I met my first serious boyfriend, the only serious boyfriend I've ever had. Yes, the boyf.

Nine years of happily committed bliss later, and I realize now that the feelings I had for Ralphy all those sticky-sweet summers ago were as evanescent as the morning dew. Fleeting as rain in August and sugar-sweet as cotton candy, but ultimately insubstantial. What I knew about love back then could have fit inside of the eye of a needle.

But the memory of that sultry summer afternoon is still clear today as a newly developed photograph even after all these years.

Oh, my love
my darling ...

I still remember my first love.

~

[Here is the poem I wrote today that inspired this post.]

Of a boy and a girl

How do I tell the story
Of a boy and a girl falling in love
Without describing the scent of rain:
Its pungent, dog-heavy smell
Making her nose crinkle,
Making him laugh at her.
Their steps both impulsive and hesitant
On this long walk home from school.


Unraveling the mysteries of You and Me:
The separate selves
The secret selves.
Hiding behind a smile transparent as clouds
Her eyes watch his watching hers
And she notices for the first time glints of gold
Stark against the black of his irises
Before she ducks her head,
Overpowered by a sudden shyness
That paralyzes as much as it thrills.


What is it about first love that makes one feel
God-like
Omnipotent
As if you have not only discovered Love for the first time
But have, in fact, created it.
Molding his firm chin out of the suppliant clay
Her hands whisper-light on his face
Shaping the cupid's bow of her mouth
His mouth heavy as a painter's brush.

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All content on this site is the sole property of Ana Cristina Simon, unless otherwise stated, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.