Glow (Draft)

I watched a firefly die last night. On a night where the heat really lingered in the parting of the sun, a glowing ball swirled into the ground, shooting past my eye and startling me out my usual summer daze. I looked down at the sidewalk across from me and was captivated by the summer darling unusually sitting on the ground and blinking. Slowly, as if not to startle, I laid my cheek against the warm cement and held my arms close to my ribs. Small pebbles pressed uncomfortably into my thigh, but fascination took over and pinned me to my spot. It was then that it began. 

Wings that flicker as fast as strobe lights were now just languid flutters in the final attempts to stay in the present. Flight was impossible and it slowly moved into short blades of grass, almost seeming modest and urgent to hide its physical ending from its fellow kin. The stars were clear, covering the sky in an array of small, distant suns, but even outer space was dull in comparison. I felt like an intruder witnessing something sacred, but as sad as this moment was I knew I’d never see something like this again. The seconds passed like minutes, but I remained lying down, only moving my eyes, absorbing every movement I could register as my heart fluttered in my chest.  

The most captivating part was the glow growing on its tiny back. It was a beacon, fading and then brightening with every passing moment, illuminating a small piece of the grass in neon yellow, shaking with each step closer to it’s last pulse in the living. Cicadas chirped quieter, fellow lightning bugs blinked rapidly as if saying farewell to an elder, and I was afraid to breathe. It wasn’t the biggest firefly I’d ever seen, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last I’d see before the end of summer, but this little bug of light caused a pang within that I couldn’t understand. 

I wanted mother nature to explain why I was drawn to this parting of the physical realm, why I was so moved by it when others would deem it depressing. Did the spirit of the light flow into the others? Was that why they were blinking so rapidly? Did they even have spirits like the rest of the kingdom since their lives were such short specks in the sea of time, barely leaving an impression? I felt awful wanting to prolong it’s death just so I could get some kind of sign, but it’s wings jerked upward so suddenly that my heart leapt in my throat at the twitch, and its light illuminated brightly and strongly across my eyes for the last time, shrinking into nothingness as quick as it came. Nature resumed, the sounds came back into my ears, and the fireflies drifted lazily across the sky above me as I laid on my back and ignored the feeling of a worm sliding across my bare feet.

I wonder if all lightning bugs die by giving one final showcase.