Fireflies
The rain is loud, and reality plays the violin. As usual, nobody is waiting. She is summer sad this evening – everything is so beautiful. God is always on her mind, and she isn't even sure God exists. She watches the cat whose ribcage lifts and drops. She wonders what the cat is dreaming. Her lover tries to reassure her about the flying snakes that rivet him on YouTube and the young women he met hiking the Continental Divide Trail and the new place with the world's best tacos he has recently discovered and the red-tailed hawk he saw early that morning. You're the campfire, he says. They're all just fireflies. Oh, how she wishes she could be a firefly for him from time to time.
Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.net, lives in Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), where she was poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. Recent book publications include a poetry collection, Wild Flowers, and a short story collection, Dona Nobis Pacem. In her blog Writing in a Woman's Voice, she publishes other women's voices.
See more of her work in 12.1