“Fireflies, you’re the work of the devil.” Her voice carried as though the fog wasn’t dense enough. “Do you see this? Ruining all my shots.”
“I think they’re beautiful.”
Her eyes left the viewfinder to glare at me. “Abandoned buildings are not supposed to be beautiful. You see those bright yellow nuisances down there?” She jabbed a finger at her camera’s screen. “Those are hope. This old house isn’t hope.”
I tried to find a glimmer amongst the dust and shattered glass piled up on the porch, between the four crumbling columns that failed to support the roof, behind the slats nailed to the front door. I couldn’t.
“You’re right,” I said. “Let me scare them off.”
So I twirled through the reed grass yard, hands sweeping the brush to disturb the bugs from their homes.
“No, stop dancing with them!” Her smile was big. “They’re flashing more now because they think you’re looking for a mate.”
I was laughing as I fell onto our blanket, arms spread and feet still kicking. “Why don’t you like hope?”
But she just stared at her camera, lips parted, eyes wide. “Don’t you know what you just did?”
The words caught me off guard. Her tone denoted sincerity and a deeper level of understanding, one I wasn’t yet comfortable divulging. What did I do but valiantly fend off flesh-eating lightning bugs in her honor? What did I do but act childishly in order to make her laugh?
“What did I do?”
Instead of speaking, she tugged me up by my elbow and pointed to the camera’s screen. She appraised me with her eyes, trying to find any hidden meanings in my expression.
This photo was not like the others she had taken that day. Sure, the derelict house still stood looming, but it seemed dwarfed by my pirouetting figure. My face, tilted up to the overcast sky, was blurred with the outline of a wide grin. Fireflies frozen in flight dotted the foreground like fairies.
“What do you think?” I asked. Her eyes gave away nothing but a sense of awe. For once in our time together I couldn’t read her.
She smiled at me. “It’s hope.”
# # #
Photo: Ihor Malytskyi
Joy Mahar is an emergent writer living on the outskirts of Detroit. Her work has…
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