The myth of the firefly

In these extended evenings as the suns disappearance starts to tell the working-men of the world to wind down and the late-nighters to put on their party pants, springtime melts into the protruding signs of summer. Unsure if whether its you or the air that has taken on a slightly discomforting weight, everything smells and tastes thicker. Greenwood doubles as a wildlife reserve in the middle of this college tinker-town and i still feel like a tourist rather than a semi-permanent addition. Maybe the fumes exuding from bent exhaust pipes or mold collecting on tossed shoe strings dangling off of telephone wires have started to mess with the anatomy of normal residential creatures. Loitering in the midst of last night's celebratory beer cans and ashes doused in lighter fluid, you can find an unidentifiable animal, found in a mystical encyclopedia crosslisted where squirrel meets opossum meet steroid infused alleycat. He/She is comfortable living the life of a vagabond rifling through 947s mistakes and memories, which eases my transitory soul. The mosquitoes have doubled and size and determination, settling more easily on my skin then i do in it. Redbreasted birds, a species i've always hated, trot rather than flap along broken sections of pavement that glitter with a confetti of broken glass. I wonder how sensitive birds feet are, resenting how bound i am to my shoes on this one way street. But last night i met the most glorious of the midwest springtime residents - the firefly. I had hardly adjusted to the idea of outside having spent the majority of the day in my bed watching Buffy abide by her birthright. Somewhere in between episodes, night's stealthy agents slipped in and slit the throats of daytime guards and a stampede of darkness filtered in. I peaked out my front door, hand still rested on the unstable doorknob and stuck one toe out into the warm waters of my porch. Leaving your house is like riding a bike - a terrifying thought if you've been out of commission for a while but surprisingly easy to pick up once you commit. So i sit and breath and sip on reheated coffee from earlier in the day, thinking and breathing and dreaming. My peripheries catch a miscellaneous light, as if the flickering streetlamps had reproduced and were teaching their young to fly. My imagination, i'm sure, i'm just not used to the unbound world. Again, it goes off, i check my cup to see if i absentmindedly replaced coffee with leftover rum. Then it bobs, closer to me, up and down like a meandering fairy with no destination in particular. My head follows its motion as my eyes track its path and i start to think that whatever toxin that greenwood gives off has officially fucked with nature. The firefly, can't be a result of natural selection, the firefly, i wonder if it ever gets headaches or suffers from epilepsy. My curiosity wins in a mental wrestling match against my languidity and i get off my seat to follow the light. It steps and i step back, it turns and i twirl - i feel its intention like a follower in a tango is meant to, and the porch turns to dance floor where the table takes the seats in arm and sends the flying across the cement. But as i step ever closer to the stairs and out into the real world i feel bound by my coffee and bed and alternative reality, so i let the light turn the stucco corner of my house alone. Not quite adjusted to the night.