Glass jars and fireflies

We used to keep our wishes
in glass jars
to save them for later.
We stored them on the shelf in your office.
Your cat knocked mine over
and it splintered into eleven shards.
I cleaned it up and replaced it with an empty, identical one.
And I never told you.

We would sit on your back porch and
gaze into your yard at
the fireflies,
little flittering orbs of orangey-yellow,
and you’d say how they were like smallspecks of the sun,
glowing in the black of night.
Sometimes you’d call me your firefly.

We’d lie on the shaggy rug on your
bedroom floor,
exchanging nothing but whispers and secrets,
and kissing not lips, but collarbones and fingertips.
You would exhale into the shell of my ear,
your breath cold and vacant like the sound of the ocean
in a seashell,
except much weaker…
And less eternal.

We decided that our favorite color
would be green, because green is the color of bliss,
and life
and your cucumber-glazed eyes.
You drew vines on my ankle with emerald marker,
telling me that my skin was the prettiest canvas.
They’re still there, wrapped around my leg like
strangling, choking, killing restraints.

I’m laying on top of my mattress, clutching
your wish jar against my chest,
and wondering what had been in there before I’d unscrewed the top
and dumped it out my window.
A firefly lands on my pinky finger, and instead
of sunset-orange, it’s glowing a pallid jade.


Suddenly, I don’t like green anymore.