Falling
He reached down and uprooted a small yellow flower from the overgrown grass beneath us, slowly plucking the petals one by one with his four-year-old fingers. I watched him with a vigilant eye, occasionally noticing the warmth of the concrete steps on the back of my legs. Once he had collected each tiny yellow whisper in his hand, he threw them into the night, and we watched them slowly float away in the breeze. He tossed the bare stem onto the ground before looking up at me with those hopeful gray eyes. “Do you think the lightning bugs will come out tonight?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
He looked away from me and reached down, pulling another flower from the dirt. “I think they will.”
A smile settled on my face. Not because of his adorable, innocent, unwavering hope that tiny bugs would light up the night sky, but because he thought that was the only reason why we sat on this porch every night.
Glancing at the dim light pouring out through the dirty window behind me, I could see the kitchen table. I thought about, my half-eaten turkey sandwich, and if it would still be there when we went back inside. I also wondered when the bitter argument would slowly die out and I knew that it was okay to creep back up to my room.
I turned again to face him, only to see that he had left the step and was playing in the grass, pulling up the thin strips of emerald and tying them into knots. The porch light buzzed and flickered, threatening to die out and leave us in the warm darkness of the humid June night.
Slightly muffled voices echoed through the torn screen door, their words burning the air between them. If only I could take him away, leave this hateful house and this hateful family and this hateful life that we were living. But he didn’t even know.
I looked up at the buzzing light, and saw moths circling around it. This would not be the last time that I dragged him outside from dinner and waited for the war to end. There were no fireflies. There would never be any fireflies. But sometimes even the stories that I made up for him made me feel a little better. Sometimes lies can be more helpful than the truth.
He yawned and laid down in the soft green grass. I pulled myself up off the step and laid down beside him.
I turned to look at him, and his eyes were closed. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he fell asleep, just another night where his wishes didn’t come true.
My eyes were getting heavy, and my vision going blurry. I felt myself falling deeper into the grass, and I was about to slip away-
“I know mommy and daddy are fighting.”
My eyes flew open and I felt my stomach drop. “What?”
He sat up. “I know that they yell at each other. Sometimes it scares me like…like… when it f-f-funders.”
“When it thunders?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He picked at the grass. “Do they still love each other?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I don’t think people who love each other fight like that. But I don’t know.”
He laid back down, and a cold breeze sent shivers up my spine. I felt my eyes get heavy again. “I think it’s time to go inside.”
The only response he gave was a small gasp. He was holding something in his hand.
“What?”
I stretched my neck to see what he was looking at, and lost my breath a little.
Nestled in his pudgy little hand sat a piece of the sun, glowing in the grass. It was beautiful; it seemed to warm everything around it. But his smile was brighter than any sun; it had been a long time since I’d seen a smile like that.
One by one, our dark corner of the world was made brighter by tiny bugs that seemed to have fallen right out of the sky. They surrounded our tiny porch, flickering like the porch light above.
I stood up, walked towards the door, and flicked the switch to turn it off. I didn’t hear anything from inside the house. The battle had ended, but I didn’t want to return home.
I turned back toward the lawn, and he had come to life, dancing under the bugs, jumping through the grass, reaching up to hold onto what hope he had left. When he trapped one in his hands, he rushed over to me. Slowly, he unfurled his fingers to reveal the glowing insect, that fluttered its wings for a moment before taking off.
He smiled. “I told you they would come out tonight.”
That Morning
No birds sang that morning.
The phone’s ringing song
woke me.
It never stopped.
Endless,
it planted itself in me.
I can’t stop hearing it.
I felt a hand on my back.
I turned to see her face,
twisted with worry,
ribboned with exhaustion.
Her words hit me
“He is still breathing,
but he is not the same person.
He will never be.”
So many questions I never asked.
When she left,
I fell into a river of remembrance
and forgot to come up for air.
White walls and tile floors.
He slept, only opening his eyes
to see the people he forgot.
Eyes glassy and cold,
not the eyes of someone I knew.
No birds sang that morning.
I only heard the song
of someone that I remembered,
and someone who forgot
me.
The Final Battle
For a split second
this wretched sky
was the most beautiful shade
of robin’s egg blue
I’d ever seen.
I knew that someone happy
was looking up at the same sky,
and I thought I’d be alright.
I wasn’t. Realization
hits harder than a bullet.
Pain pulsated through me,
stronger than a heartbeat,
burning brighter than the flames
that seared through the dark, humid air
in this lonely jungle.
The fire that we thought
would somehow bring us comfort
was never good enough.
A smooth river of blood
ran over my hands.
I heard someone cry out my name.
The wet mud underneath me
suddenly felt like home.
The melody of gunfire
became silent.
The sapphire sky covered me,
A soft and warm blanket.
My war was finally over.
Patience
She tugged at the dusty bucket hat, avocado green with brown stitches and the name of a lakeside dive they used to eat at once they were done fishing. She’d braided her light brown hair in two long braids down her back. As the wind blew, she felt her hat flap in the breeze. Trying to walk, but mostly just sliding, she made her way down the small hill that opened up to her favorite area to go fishing; it was on the same level as the water, muddy and studded with big rocks, protected by trees all around it. Fluffy clouds of cotton floated through the air, and she could hear frogs hiding in the cattails. It was the best spot on the river, and it was completely hidden. She could see one slice of blue sky above her, and she could see the other side of the river. On a good day, could even spot, just past the trees, a jet black cow lumbering across a pasture.
She heard the murky green water splash in the distance, and she knew it would be a good day. Her old blue lawn chair under her arm, she searched the muddy beach for a place to sit. She chose to sit right by the water, so she could dip her toes in. Once she settled herself down, she reached into the styrofoam box and pulled a wiggly worm from the dirt, piercing its pink body and sliding onto the rusty hook. She wiped the cobwebs off the old pole, and ran her thumb over the name engraved on the cobalt blue handle.
Remembering what her grandpa told her, she cast her line perfectly out into the lake. Then, all she had to do was sit and wait.
It was like she could feel him sitting next to her in his matching blue chair, showing her pictures of different fish.. She always loved the orange spotted sunfish, because she loved how beautifully the grey-blue and orange scales seemed to meld together like watercolor. Her grandpa would laugh when she told him that. “They sure are pretty, aren’t they?” Then, with his dirt-stained fingers, he turned to another page in the book. “But these are my favorite.” He showed her a dark gray fish with whiskers. “Catfish,” he’d murmur. “My dad always loved catfish.”
She could hear her cellphone ringing in her black drawstring bag. She reached in and turned the sound off. She knew that her parents would be looking for her. She didn’t care that when they found her, they would see her nice black dress coated in dirt, and her knees scraped up from climbing through her window and sliding down the rough shingles on her roof. She just needed one day that wasn’t full of people she didn’t know, saying they were sorry for something they didn’t do. She didn’t want to remember him like that: dark clothes and dark skies and a dark church. She wanted to remember him and his fish book, showing her the unappealing catfish and seeing so much beauty in something that she thought was so hideous. No caskets, no headstones, only the fishy smell of the lake that lingered on their clothes and his favorite bucket hat.
She felt a tug on the pole, and reached for the reel. Sharply and suddenly, she yanked the pole back and began to reel the fish in. She could feel it fighting her, but she pulled even harder.
She could hear him yelling behind her. “C’mon, I know you can do it! Reel it in!”
Finally, she pulled it up on to the rocky beach. It flopped and fidgeted on the line, splashing water on her dress, and she watched it struggle to breathe without water. She held the dark gray body still, observing its wide mouth and whiskers. She smiled. Catfish.
She pulled it off the hook and with one swift motion, tossed it back into the emerald lake. She heard a plop in the water before it swam away.
She folded the chair, packed up her worms and tucked the pole under her arm before walking back up the hill. She took one look behind her at the footprints in the mud, brushed the dirt off her dress, and tugged at the bucket hat one last time.
Name
I still hear his name.
The curve of the lines that form his title,
a book once opened and suddenly closed.
It dances with the sun and the moon,
inhaling the darkness and exhaling the light.
It soars on the salty waves
of a never ending ocean.
It floats on a single whisper,
breathing wind through wildflowers.
I hear his name in the raindrops
as they fall from the sky.
I hear it with every squeak
of the rusty screen door.
I hear it when I see a bottle filled with the poison
that blinded him from the tree that night.
When I sit down in that hospital
and see his scars.
I wonder if he’s at peace,
if they’ll ever let him go.
With every breath that machine takes for him,
I don’t hear anything.