The Light of the Fireflies

by Paul Pen

Sometimes I thought of them as suicide victims, glass bodies hanged and swinging from a cable.

A door loses its meaning if you don’t ever go through it. It becomes a wall.

There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light.

She also served a seventh bowl. The one nobody would touch. And which, as ever, would end up in the trash or down the plughole.

There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light.

“So the fact you don’t actually see these bugs,” Mom said, “doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If they exist here”—she put her finger on my temple—“and here”—she moved it to my chest—“that’s all that matters.”

Heading one of them was the motto that should guide any good spy. “No one must know you are there,”

My sister was wrong when she said that what the baby and I had in the basement wasn’t a life. Of course it was. It was our life. The only one we had.

Right then an unknown emotion was set off inside me. A spark that fought to catch fire.

“Take me away from this darkness.”

The unknown spark that had caught light inside me became a little flame. A flame that burned.

At that moment, the fireflies in the jar came back to life to glow brighter than ever.

And she felt an urge to grab her son’s head. Full of guilt, she thought about how she’d squeeze him in her hands and scream at him until she lost her voice to please stop being like he was. To be a normal boy.

This one was so hard.

I observed the two bits of important things in my life that had broken. Something much more important had broken inside me.

Each step we take makes the nearest crickets fall silent. The rest continue their singing, encouraging the moon to appear, perhaps.

The moon has answered the call of the crickets and is beginning to tinge the sea’s surface with silver.

Maybe the day has come when his desire to know is stronger than his fear of the unknown.

“We’re outside now,” I tell him, repeating the phrase I’d said to him back then. He gives me a mocking look because he thinks I’ve said something obvious.

Because I know the light will always belong to people like him.

And those unwilling to look beyond their own little world will be left in the dark.