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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Eclipsed” Down in the Dirt, v180 (the February 2021 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Excerpts from the Plague Years the Down in the Dirt Jan.-April 2021 issues collection book		get the 420 page Jan.-April 2021 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Firefly

Andrin Albrecht

Scenery passes––time doesn’t matter:
There is a bed, a stove, and a window to junk.
The pane is wet from morning rain, but now it’s quiet––eerily silent
Save for the cars rushing past outside.
He sits in a kingdom of pizza boxes and smoke:
Cigarette in hand, his stare blank, broke and broken now––
Feeling so empty, ever empty ... A bait left to swim without a thread or a rod,
Now that the only one to break his nowhereness, his brother, two years older, has moved out.

He opens the window. John is married, John is gone:
Has found a life that always seemed so easy, found a wife, a reason to belong.
A photograph above his bed’s been lately overturned, picked up again, then touched
Like a kiss to the stump of a cigarette. It burned.
Another cigarette dies noiselessly in an ashtray on a chair. He steps onto the balcony.
The rain has stopped––a breath of air. His headphones on, with ember in his hand,
He lingers there. Listens to half-forgotten Paul McCartney songs.
It’s night. No city lights, for once in every quarter-moon the lines break down this part of town
And darkness rises like a cloud.

Two times he’s tried to hit on girls
Over drinks in local bars.
He’s seen how it’s done in TV shows:
How the men smile and banter, bring them home.
From the loudspeakers whispered the voices of ghosts
As he spotted a pretty blonde and attempted a joke.
On the lonely trot back, he wondered what went wrong,
Tried again Friday come, even offered to pay.
She turned her back: “Leave me alone, you creep!” And she was gone.
Just that sneer of disgust he caught from the corner of his eye
As he walked into the driving rain ...
Alone with himself. Alone with the pain and the boredom
Of living a life that might as well not be happening at all.

Somewhere a boy cries. Oh, just to cry like him!
Somewhere a bottle shatters, a car misfires, a saxophone plays out
Of rhythm. Some wine, some Chinese takeout––one more cigarette, and then goodnight.
Insomnia.
Rerun of a primetime comedy. Apartment made of endless, lifeless corridors:
No minotaur to slay, just the alarm set on his phone to wake him, shake him,
Make him drag himself through urine-scented subways to a room where he writes machine laws
That will determine lives and strives––who lives, who dies––for people he will never know.

A hand upon the railing. How deep down?
A small step for a man, no blemish for mankind ...
But he’s too tired now. Heads back inside.

Suddenly, a tap against his back––a brush against his palm!
Looks down, then frowns, then wonders if he jumped after all.
He reaches out, his mouth ajar––a gasp, the stump falls to the floor,
His cigarette, still ember-tipped, draws with it smoke in ash-white coils.
He holds a thing with tiny fists and arms, and tiny wings:
A thing that should not be at all.

Inside, the door well locked, a mason jar,
The torchlight of his mobile phone: the darkness gone.
In the flood of light, within the jar: a figure like a small girl’s doll.
A toy, a ghost, a butterfly with wings of glass,
An old wife’s tale put into flesh. He shudders, laughs.
He falls onto his couch and holds the treasure high, he giggles
Like a man alive: the wonder of a child, once more surprised.
“What are you?” Jar to his eye, he sees two hands, a fir gown, leaves for sleeves,
Upon malachite hair a clover wreath, and skin the shade of olive trees.
“Are you a boy? A girl? A thing?”
No breasts, but skirted legs, so thin that they might break upon one faulty breath.
He squints.
“Would you like something to eat?”
His winged guest stares from wide eyes, deep as forest wells, and cowers, mortally afraid.
It holds its hands as if to shield itself from imminent attacks.
He gets a spoon––a spoon he hasn’t washed for weeks––and wonders: “What do fairies eat?”
Then, reaching for the cupboard, he produces one forgotten honey pot.
He dips the spoon, and carefully unscrews the mason jar. Between the rim and lid
He lets his treat drip goldenly to where the fairy sits.
Locks up. Leans back. Observes ...

... and falls asleep.

Fairy, fairy, in the jar,
Who’s the most lonesome of them all?
Whom have you come to grace with light,
Disoriented, on this night?

Coming back from work next day,
Home truly feels like home.
No mirage what he thought had happened, no collage of sound and light
But there, upon his shelf, the same small fairy, writhing,
Pleading suddenly! He realizes: jar is locked, the honey eaten,
Hours passed! The fairy breathes, but breathes no longer easily.
A nail! Perforating the metallic lid
He brings relief.
Returns his guest to air.

“How are you liking your new home?” he asks,
The fairy stumbles, glances up. Its mouth is smaller than the moon on his fingernail,
As green as grass,
And when it opens, he does not hear words, but sounds
Like from forgotten bells.
We knew that song once, you and I,
And hummed along in childhood games:
When summers took forever
And each year was filled with longing for the next, the next discovery, so careless––
Just like flying.
We unlearned to fly when we became aware that, one day, we would die.
He sits and listens, blissful, with a smile.

Another walk through darkness,
Looking up at billboards.
The rain has turned to snow.
All those faces, all those souls who left traces:
Politicians in ties, and photo models with teeth of such pure white it’s blinding,
Social workers and doctors, actors endorsing perfume,
And dinner tables lined with families:
Children smiling, parents dining, glasses clinking
In fearsome harmony!
How must it feel to matter to someone?
Just a little bit?
Just this once?

And then back home, undressed and showering alone,
Spread-eagled, naked on his bed,
A spoon of honey: the fairy’s fed.
Unscrew the lid just a little bit
And listen to it: perhaps praising, perhaps lamenting,
But always that song of childhood bells.

Fairy, fairy, don’t you cry,
You’re safe here from the world outside.
Don’t you know that now you’re mine
And I am yours: till the end of time?

The bells sing him to sleep each night
Allowing him to dream of strangest tides:
Of forests, overhung with purple vines, and islands of carbuncle piles,
Underground kingdoms, and waterways between columns of white.
Stalagmites, stalactites,
Trees like royal cities, each crown its own fall-colored sky.
Dances in the moonlight. Kisses. Laughter.
Night by night.

He wakes: it’s black outside,
Just barely 3 a.m. The fairy’s silent, hands pressed to the glass
And eyes fixed on its sister pane: the window, leading out onto the streets.
He sits and watches.
Gasps.
What he thought stars are moving now! No helicoptered city lights,
But dozens and hundreds of lanterns!
Paper cherries, drifting through the sky:
Wings like butterflies, and darkened thumbnail faces
Turning left and right.
Desperate eyes, and silver cries
Like the sound of a myriad bells in front of every window,
From every rooftop and street-gulch,
From towers and chimneys and gardens and gutters and spires of piercing electric light,
The fairies shout.
They’re out searching tonight.

“They’re looking for you, my love––
All those others, all those lanterns, out to find
You, to un-disappear;
But who would come for me? Not John, that much is clear,
And not my parents,
And no friends.
I would go missing all alone:
Disappear, and leave nothing behind.”

Together they watch until dawn breaks, and light
Sweeps the luminous search crew out of the sky
And the world becomes empty,
Teeming only with regular life.
Red on the fairy’s fists, and red on the glass,
Which he wipes away with a toothbrush, and then mixes the honey
With scotch.

And night for night
They watch the fairy lights.
There are more every time.
They do not give in,
Do not abandon their kin.

The bells grow weaker, though:
Each song now the shade of an elegy.
Sometimes now, when it sings,
The fairy’s cheeks glisten
With tears.

Disappear.

Fairy, fairy, all alone,
For you there is no other home.
I’d break my heart if I let you go
And would dissolve, like summer snow.

Returning one evening,
Distraught.
One of those days, a nightmare, endless dark,
His boss hurling bottles at his office wall,
Women laughing in the mall,
Puddles reaching for his socks, his pants, his soul:
Just wanting to break down––at last, back home ...
But no, the glass!
All shattered on the floor, the fairy’s out, but where?
All windows closed––
Up there, it hides behind a curtain fold:
“You beast, you ingrate!”
Jumping, snatching, quickly catching hold.

“So you don’t like the house I built for you?
Don’t like the sweets I give to you,
Don’t love the love I’m showing you?
You’d rather disappear, betray me,
Spit on me, go off, disgrace me,
Just so you could laugh about me
With your critter peers?”

The walls are trembling, and his fingers pressing,
Pressing.
Shake a fist, be fire, be cold rage,
Be mighty,
Life and death, be hangman, judge,
And savior all at once––
Don’t leave me,
Leave me,
You are nothing, I am all,
I am your world, your God, your home,
Don’t leave me, leave me,
Guest, slave, love––
Oh fairy, fairy, sing for me,
Flap your wings for me,
Keep me company in life
And let my death remind you what I was to you!
I’m here, you’re here, you’ll stay––
Together, safe, please––
Don’t disappear!

A twitch, a nod,
The head bent to one side.
A drop,
One drop of blood
And one last fading chime ...

Quiet.

Somewhere his voice cries out. He’s torn away.
Somewhere he steps on shattered glass, red spills, pain doesn’t come.
A cigarette falls down, still glowing,
Going out between his toes. Shock.
Catatonia.
His mind an endless, lifeless corridor:
And no one home, no matter how he wails and shouts and breaks and lies in shambles like a seashell clogged with tar.
Shattering,
Washed up against the harbor’s concrete wall.

Outside, the night has fallen. With it come
A thousand little lanterns, flying in a scattered halo higher than his high-rise.
Storm of bells––their every voice a song.
He falls apart.
Opens his window,
Reaches out,
And lets the fairy fall.
Climbs up into exhaust-fume wind and fairy call,
Looks out
And spreads his arms to join,
To fly,
To search for
What
He’s lost
Up
With them
All.

Fairy, fairy, I am you.
Now there’s nothing left to do.
Try to join our brethren’s shine,
And disappear together,
Fly––

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