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We Chased Fireflies

 

It was the middle of the night and I’d found my

​

father

 

in his under-shirt,

 

elbows on the kitchen table, head in his hands, a cup of coffee within reach.

 

His mother had passed.

 

Grand-mommy.

 

I'd seen her wither, her hospice nurse lovingly wetting her lips with a sponge;

 

But this isn’t how I remember her:

 

I will always know the warmth of the oven,

 

cooking as an act of love,

 

all of us gathered in that small kitchen.

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I will always remember

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that mysterious basement with it's

 

stacks of newspaper and old toys - artifacts of my father's childhood - preserved in cardboard boxes.

 

At night, we chased fireflies. So many fireflies.

 

To this day, I know I'll never see anything like that again, my grandmothers backyard,

 

a constellation of those alien lights, signals to those below.

 

When we arrived, she’d greet us, saying: “How you?”

 

Always a Pyrex dish of green jello salad  - as an offering to myself and the cousins.

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And given the popularity of Ghost Busters at the time,

we affectionately called the green jello  “Slime,”

 

and in time,

she did too.