Glimmers Contained

Glimmers Contained

Galloping haphazardly in twilight’s glow

Diving for the golden glints

That made up the firefly show

There were 5 of us loud children-

-No two were the same-

We were the proud adolescents

Of our precious Briarwood Lane

Muddy Tennis shoes

Darted that way and this

Believing we’d caught the floating light

‘Till we realized we had missed

Laughter and shouts filled the

Warm summer night

The sun continued melting

‘Till moon was our only light

Mama’s voice was heard,

So, we said goodnight to the stars

And each fell asleep that night

Beside a small twinkling jar

            We were supposed to write a Childhood Memory Poem, which is a poem using: A memory from our childhood, a pair of shoes, a color, a sound, and the name of a street or the name of a person. Yeah. It was a little random, but… that was the poem! So, this is my Childhood Memory Poem!

            So, my childhood was littered with summers full of firefly catching. This night specifically was the night where my brother’s friend decided to show me something “cool”… he said, “Hey Melissa, look at this... Stand still”. I did what he said, watching the little firefly that he had caught in his hand. Very quickly, he took the little bug, and smeared it on my blue tee shirt; killing the bug and leaving behind a glow-in-the-dark trail.

            This was a bad choice on his part, because…  I was, at least in my mind, practically in charge of my own personal PETA organization, and as far as I was concerned a lightning bug was just as much an animal as a bunny rabbit, which was just as much a living being as you or I, and should therefore be treated with the utmost love and respect. Killing a bug so you can admire a trail of glowing green slime did not seem like a respectful, loving thing to do.

            This boy spent the next few moments being screamed at by an extraordinarily angry me. I might have even cried because I felt so bad for the lightning bug… I’m not completely sure though…

            But, as I was writing, that scene just didn’t quite fit, so instead, I just wrote about the nights of lightning bug catching in general. It’s one of the things I absolutely love about summer… Watching the fireflies, catching them, having a jar of them to light up my room at night… It makes my heart happy. And now you know.