What the Fireflies Knew
Poems as fiction-
I.
The forest held its breath before the storm,
and I sat small beneath the towering pines,
my coffee growing cold between my palms
like all the conversations I never had.
Lightning wrote its anger across the sky
in a language I was just learning to read—
the grammar of solitude, the syntax of regret,
the punctuation of chances missed.
II.
The fireflies rose from the undergrowth
like prayers made visible,
each pulse a tiny telegraph:
Here. Here. Here.
They knew what I had forgotten—
that longing is not shameful,
that reaching out into the dark
is the most human thing we do.
III.
Hazel’s silence still echoes
in the spaces between their blinking.
Three months since her last text,
since the slow fade that feels like dying.
The promotion that went to someone
who smiled wider, stayed later,
pretended the work meant something
beyond the mortgage and the car payment.
All those small defeats that led me here,
to this log, this clearing, this cup
of bitter comfort brewed over flames
I built with my own shaking hands.
IV.
In the lightning's harsh revelation
I see myself clearly:
forty-three and camping alone,
finding wisdom in insects.
But when darkness returns,
the fireflies become miraculous again—
tiny stars fallen to earth,
each one a small act of faith.
V.
The storm breaks open like grief,
warm rain baptizing my upturned face.
The fireflies retreat to shelter,
their light show ended.
I pour my cold coffee onto the forest floor,
watch the earth drink what I couldn't finish.
Tomorrow I'll drive back to the apartment
where nobody waits.
But tonight I learned something
about the mathematics of desire:
that even unanswered calls for connection
still illuminate the darkness.
VI.
The fireflies will find new clearings,
new nights, new chances to pulse
their desperate hope into the void.
They know what I'm still learning:
that the reaching matters more
than the catching,
that the light we offer
is never wasted,
even when it seems
no one is watching,
even when the storm
threatens to wash it all away.
VII.
I pack my camp stove by flashlight,
roll my sleeping bag tight.
The forest returns to its ancient silence,
but something has shifted.
In the morning I'll drive toward
the life I temporarily escaped,
carrying this small revelation:
that loneliness is just love
with nowhere to go,
and maybe that's enough—
maybe being witness
to the fireflies' dance
is its own form
of participation,
its own way of saying
Here. Here. Here.
into the vast, listening dark.