“There used to be more fireflies when I was a little girl,” Mom tells me. “I used to catch them, just like you.” At this she boops my nose. My repurposed Peter Pan peanut butter jar winks neon yellow-green from the fireflies I caught before dinner. When I was really little, Mom used to come with me. Now she lets me go alone. Every night I catch some for my nightlight, and when I wake in the morning they’re gone.
At first when I ask her why, she tells me that she sets them free so I can catch them again at dusk. Round and round. I don’t know understand why I can’t keep them, so I don’t stop asking. Eventually, while scrubbing dishes, she says, “Wild things are meant to be free, Jeannie.” She’s in one of those moods where she feels “harassed” by everyone and everything, so I know I’m not supposed to answer.
“They’re bugs,” I say.
“Bugs are not domesticated,” she replies.
During dinner, Mom and Dad talk like knives sharp, quick and quiet while I watch the day’s catch zoom around my jar. Neon light pulses like it’s alive. If I gathered all the fireflies into my palm, would they look like a rock glittering in the sun? Like that fool’s gold I found panning last summer. It wasn’t real gold, but I felt like I won anyway. For Mom, that’s enough. Dad disagrees. When I glance at them, they stop whispering, and Mom purses her lips like she’s had a mouthful of Sour Patch Kids. Dad asks whether I’ve ever considered catching butterflies. “You can pin them in shadow boxes.”
“Pin them?”
“When they’re dead,” Dad explains. “They’re beautiful on display. All those colors.”
It feels like he wants me to pick his side. The idea makes me nauseous. I shake my head. Mom shoots me a grateful look, and my insides twist apart. Something is wrong, and that wrongness has spilled from its container into the dining room and all over the table. It’s filled our cups and plates. It’s all we can eat or drink now. Bite after bite of wrongness. Sip after sip.
At bedtime Mom selects The Giving Tree. When she’s done, she smiles and strokes my hair and says, “Never be the giving tree.”
I promise. “I’ll always be the boy.”
Disappointment flickers across her face like the light in my jar then it’s gone.
In the morning, my jar is still there, and ringing its bottom are the shiny yellow-brown bodies of the lightning bugs I caught the night before. Feet up, antennae askew. I didn’t know they would die. No wonder Mom wanted them to be free. I’ll have to bury them. I call for Mom but there’s no answer. I call again, louder. Nothing. I clutch the jar by its yellow lid. When I search the house, she’s gone like summer.
I wonder whether she’ll be outside at dusk.
Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks
Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Her stories appear in
CRAFT, Passages North,
Fractured Lit, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Her micros have been selected for Best Microfiction 2021 and 2025, the
Wigleaf Top 50 in 2022 and the Wigleaf Longlist in 2023. She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Learn more at chelseastickle.com.