{"id":1235,"date":"2011-07-07T14:38:21","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T18:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2012-07-15T20:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T00:12:32","slug":"fireflies-sans-cigarettes-by-ariel-dantona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/fireflies-sans-cigarettes-by-ariel-dantona\/","title":{"rendered":"“Fireflies Sans Cigarettes” by Ariel Dantona"},"content":{"rendered":"

I confuse cigarettes with fireflies<\/p>\n

for every evening spent in search of you:<\/p>\n

the way they flicker is one and the same,<\/p>\n

and both buoy up and down,<\/p>\n

down and up,<\/p>\n

one on wings, the other between fingers<\/p>\n

of Podunk people<\/p>\n

on sagging, Podunk porches;<\/p>\n

the problem is the first can be collected,<\/p>\n

but the latter must be caught,<\/p>\n

the first can spoil the heart and lungs, but<\/p>\n

the latter eats through time and that I haven\u2019t got \u2013<\/p>\n

you\u2019re missing,<\/p>\n

you\u2019re very-missing, over-the-moon-<\/p>\n

and-in-the-Milky-Way-missing,<\/p>\n

and you\u2019ll be dead and gone,<\/p>\n

if I decide to up and never look.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fireflies brood on the handlebars<\/p>\n

of a bike that isn\u2019t red and isn\u2019t worn<\/p>\n

and therefore isn\u2019t yours \u2013<\/p>\n

though I trip on my own heels and check<\/p>\n

for your baseball cards crimped between the spokes \u2013<\/p>\n

and the sky folds over everything,<\/p>\n

buckling under purple light and navy strokes<\/p>\n

and fluffy drifts of pink \u2013 you would have called it chalk smears<\/p>\n

until the devil left the details<\/p>\n

and blurred it all to black, to night, to the green<\/p>\n

of the mosquito lights<\/p>\n

under which we spit our seeds and breathed our hose water in,<\/p>\n

lived on simple, silly things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My mother says it\u2019d be better if I rested on my knees,<\/p>\n

if I took a break and gave a dime to get a dime<\/p>\n

of that cheap, powdered lemonade kids sell<\/p>\n

before they grow into their bodies,<\/p>\n

but I insist I\u2019ve got to keep going, going, going, or<\/p>\n

you\u2019ll never end up found;<\/p>\n

she says I haven\u2019t been the same,<\/p>\n

that I must have loved very-missing-you,<\/p>\n

if I keep searching behind hedges<\/p>\n

that roam and bloom and break,<\/p>\n

if I keep stewing in this habit of burning fingers<\/p>\n

and sighing out your name,<\/p>\n

under halos of ash,<\/p>\n

of Menthol smoke and forgotten memories.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I promise her, she\u2019s right, I\u2019ve changed with the solstice,<\/p>\n

with the fattening heat,<\/p>\n

and I loved you, I love you,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll love you \u2013 my sneakers\u2019 soles, they pare away,<\/p>\n

and the bugs we caught<\/p>\n

now roll on their backs, withering to singes<\/p>\n

at the bottom of the glass;<\/p>\n

lemonade expires in grubby, paper cups<\/p>\n

as children like me grow into new skins as children like you<\/p>\n

grow out of old ones<\/p>\n

and go missing, over-the-moon-<\/p>\n

and-into-the-Milky-Way, dead to cul-de-sac rounds<\/p>\n

and those\u00a0 sweaty, neighborhood block parties,<\/p>\n

kept alive by a game<\/p>\n

of look-and-seek, of forgetting to remember,<\/p>\n

then remembering to forget.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About the author:\u00a0An avid reader and rising college student, Ariel Dantona has been writing since the age of eight. Having just finished her first novel, Up They Grew<\/em>, she also enjoys writing poetry, screenplays, and film critiques, and has a penchant for the avant-garde, horrific, and socially taboo. Her style often utilizes stream-of-consciousness narration and gritty description, with a focus on human nature, the supernatural, and societal satire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confuse cigarettes with fireflies for every evening spent in search of you: the way they flicker is one and the same, and both buoy up and down, down and up, one on wings, the other between fingers of Podunk people on sagging, Podunk porches; the problem is the first can be collected, but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3280,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions\/3280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}