To Catch a Firefly

by Emmy Sanders

I think I knew he’d never stay.

Only you. There’s only ever been you.

“We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”

“Not everyone is going to understand you, Ellis. But it’s not your job to make them.”

No, this isn’t our end. Never that.

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.

I think it was at thirteen that I first felt my heart beat for you. And break, just a little. Because I knew, like that tornado, you’d leave destruction in your path, and I’d be your willing victim. I’d do it again. I love you, my brilliant firefly.

“And high above, the moon sits round, and we, in its light. Waxing, waning, never gone. A gift to see the night.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, parading around behind a shield of flippancy.”

But then you grow up and realize real life is messy and unpredictable, and no guy is going to show up at your front door with two blue boutonnieres just to make you happy. Because seriously, who the fuck does that?”

My heart picks up speed, my body heats, and there. There it is, that intangible, magnetic force pulling me toward someone I can’t even physically see.

How would I explain my heart doesn’t know how to beat for anyone but him?

“You never told me the man is a goddamn lumberjack-me-off-please. I mean, fucking hell, Lucky, he could swallow me whole.”

They’re you. The closest I could ever come to capturing you.

“We’ll never be done. Me and you, we don’t have an ending.”

I miss you, my precious firefly.

“I’m honestly asking, Dani, ’cause I don’t know how. I can’t tell him I’m…heartbroken. I can’t tell him I’ve been secretly wishing, all these years, that he and I could… That we could be…”

“that it feels like your atoms are vibrating when you’re away from them? Like you’re half of a whole, and your body knows it. And until you’re in their arms again, every single piece of you is straining toward them because…because they’re your home. They’re part of you. Your beginning and your never-ending. How? How do I move on from that?”

Our windmill.

The person I return to, time and time again. The one I come home to.

Ellis is home to me.

He’s always preferred physical communication anyway, and I’m not about to ask him to change, not when his hands are holding me as if I’m precious cargo.

“That’s right. Just like that. It’s okay to let go, baby. Let go for me.”

He’s not just a crush. He never was.

He’s the man no one else has ever measured up to.

My mountain of a man, breathing me in, his lips pressed lightly to my skin.

“I love traveling. I love my job. But at the end of the day, all I want is to share it with you. You’re the one I want to come home to. You’re the one I miss every time I’m back in New York. You’re the one who makes me happy, who makes my pulse jump like no other high.”

“Well you’re my goddamn moon, Ellis. You call, I come.”

You’re it for me, El. You’re my big goddamn romance.

I’ll make sure he’s happy here. I’ll give him a home so warm and inviting he won’t ever regret staying by my side. He’ll know he’s loved, without fail, without limits, without end.

“I’m so ridiculously in love with you, you’re going to get sick of hearing me say it.”

“You’re broad, like a mountain. Muscular. Strong. Your presence is big, but you’re so gentle

“You’re breathtaking,”

And every time I stayed away a little longer, it felt like I was losing my breath. Like I had less oxygen in my lungs. I was starved of it without you, El. You don’t make me feel trapped, okay? Never. You’re the air I breathe.”

And I think… Fuck, I think I might love him.