My first encounter with a lightning bug was a glow splotch on my car windshield. I paid little mind--I thought maybe random bug guts were reflecting the moon or another car's headlights. Fireflies are insects in Disney movies that are big enough to fly mice through the Australian back-country. Fireflies are bugs that Adam Young used to conjure a perfect electronic Owl City melody. Fireflies are only imagined.
That's what I thought until they surrounded me like infant stars, flickering nature's giggles across the breeze. I wanted to dance in them. I did dance in them. They bobbed over whispering fields like helium wishes. I mentally blew every one of them heavenward.
My mental list of favorite insects shuddered and "butterflies" sank to second place. Lightning bugs crawled innocently to position 1. I plucked one from a blade of grass and allowed it to crawl across my skin, illuminating freckles with every pulse of yellow-green light. I imagined hundreds of them landing on my outstretched arms and upturned face. I don't think I would ever stop laughing.
Some things in life take your soul on a Ferris wheel, around and around in elated rapture. It's been several weeks now and my soul is still riding with hands thrown in the air and giggles taking flight.
Bliss.
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That's what I thought until they surrounded me like infant stars, flickering nature's giggles across the breeze. I wanted to dance in them. I did dance in them. They bobbed over whispering fields like helium wishes. I mentally blew every one of them heavenward.
My mental list of favorite insects shuddered and "butterflies" sank to second place. Lightning bugs crawled innocently to position 1. I plucked one from a blade of grass and allowed it to crawl across my skin, illuminating freckles with every pulse of yellow-green light. I imagined hundreds of them landing on my outstretched arms and upturned face. I don't think I would ever stop laughing.
Some things in life take your soul on a Ferris wheel, around and around in elated rapture. It's been several weeks now and my soul is still riding with hands thrown in the air and giggles taking flight.
Bliss.
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