To Catch a Firefly

by Emmy Sanders

“How do you catch a firefly?”

I was ten years old when I met Lucky. I knew it then, and I know it now. He’s a firefly. Luminous and wild. He was never meant to be trapped. Not here and not with me.

We hold onto the memories from our past, don’t we? We cling to the pieces that made the whole of us, good or bad. Because if we don’t…if we don’t keep them close…we might lose that part of who we are.

In my weakest moments, I wish you’d stay. I wish you’d hear the words I could never bring myself to give. I wish you’d know the deepest secrets in my heart and, somehow, share them in yours.

Have you ever seen a mountain give way? Seen the rock face sheer off in the force of nature’s demand, trees and dirt and tons of once-steady terrain rushing toward the ground, unable to fight the tide of gravity? That would describe this moment. Sweeping. Earth-shattering. Destructive in the best possible way. Unstoppable.

Maybe that’s what makes love—all the moments, big and small. All the memories piled up one on top of the other, just like those Northern Lights that paint across the sky at the edge of the world. Maybe, when it comes down to it, love is in the act of living. It’s choosing—breathing—that person every single day.