The Last of the Bugs

I’m jealous of the ants.

Strange, I know, to be envious of bulbous stealers of crumbs, but the ants have a foundation that rivals any bug that crawls, flies, or slithers.

Below my perch on a blade of damp sweet grass, they march in a tireless highway of black into the safety of the earth, their bodies aligned in perfect two-by-two formation. A sense of shared purpose propels their spindly legs. I feel myself go green. Every summer, they persist. The queen may change, and their hills may crumble, but still they gather, build, multiply. Their intricate networks beneath the soil teem with unstoppable life. And guaranteed companionship. They are never solitary. To be an ant is to belong to a collective mind, to have ten thousand siblings holding your hand in the dark.

They pack away the remnants of summer in caverns where the frost can’t touch them, preparing for a tomorrow they know is coming.

I don’t have a tomorrow.

Their ignorance is abhorrent. They scurry about with their heads down, blind to the magnificent canopy above them, blind to the fading stars, utterly unaware of how lucky they are to have a future to plan for.

From my low perch, I have also watched the giants who chase my kind around their manicured yards. I see their soft flesh grow darker after weeks beneath the sun. They carry summer on their skins. Greediness slows their movements, as if the sun were a permanent fixture in their sky. They bathe in it, they laugh, they spill sweet juices into the grass that the ants carry away. Their purpose is to simply live.

By the time the last of the flowers wilt, the warmth on their shoulders begins to wane. They peel and shed their summer coats, turning pale before the autumn leaves even think to fall. Decades stretch before them, yet they watch the season slip through their fingers with a passive sort of mourning.

To them, it is just late August; another season come and gone. To me, it is the twilight of the world.

My wings feel heavy, stiffened by a crisp wind that smells of dying leaves. I believe that creatures that have been dealt a fleeting existence feel the changes of the earth more deeply than those who see season after season change. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to taste next summer’s air. To feel the suffocating, beautiful humidity of a July evening just one more time.

But I don’t have much time.

For three weeks, the sky was a swirling sea of amber lights. Hundreds of my kin drifted over the grass, blinking out hopeful codes in a dutiful dance to ensure the longevity of our species. I was part of that symphony. I flew beside my brethren until my crooked wing tired and my flight path declined into looping, clumsy circles. I knew what I looked like. An unworthy mate. An inferior stock. Why me? Why was I born to be alone while the ants lived among thousands? Did I not illuminate the world enough for Mother Nature to spare me a brighter, straighter existence?

How often I rested on a leaf during those peak weeks, watching the successful males spiral upward in dazzling, synchronized grid, willing a bird to catch me in its beak. Or a bat to pull me into the dark abyss of the night.

But like all creatures hewn from the earth, my instinct doesn’t allow me to stop.

I force my wings to move, lifting my small, chitinous body into the air. The chemical furnace in my abdomen blinks to life. It is my voice, my heart, my only hope.

The staccato rhythm lights up the air around me. I hover, staring into the silver-lit expanse. Nothing. My body pulses again.

See me! My beacon screams.

See me!

See me!

See me

Into the void goes my plea.

A firefly’s adult life is a cosmic punishment. We’re given a mere handful of time to fulfill an end that has no means. We provide light and wonder to those who witness us, but no one knows the desperation of our outwardly joyful dance. Reproduce. Keep going. I scream into the night. Though my clock is ticking loud enough to drown out the crickets, biology persists.

My reservoir is dangerously low, but I do not desire to eat. I was born into the warm air, with reserves my body had ingested during its larval stage. My entire existence is fueled by the ghosts of what I consumed deep in the damp earth as a subterranean glowworm. I have no mouthparts for chewing, no need for the sweet nectar of goldenrod, and no time to waste on foraging. Every ounce of fat locked in my tiny body is oil for my lamp, like a self-consuming candle.

I hunger for something different.

I land on a velvety, fading petal of a wild purple aster and try again. Each unanswered pulse is a chance slipping through my claws.

Out of all the millions of unhatched spheres in the damp leaf litter, why did the universe select my egg to hatch? How did my plump, squirming larval body survive until the spoil thrust me from its security and into the world with no direction, no family

Another second ticks by. My internal winter approaches. I will accept the frost with open wings.

Then, a miracle. Down, far down, in the tangled roots of a raspberry bush, she calls to me. A single, perfectly timed yellow-green stroke of lightning in the dark.

I flash back. I am answered.

Me! She calls to me!

I zigzag through the bramble, ignoring the thorns that scrape against my elytra, and land on the mossy stone next to her. She is beautiful. Her antennae twitch in recognition at my form. At last, there is hope.

This is what we glow for— our tiny, determined hearts that beat summer after summer in our thoraxes. I extend my antennae, feeling for hers, tasting her pheromones. For a brilliant moment, the impending autumn doesn’t matter. I forget the brevity of my existence. Summer is for the bugs that live in the light, but this darkness belongs entirely to us. In this hidden space beneath the raspberry leaves, we are the only suns that matter.

By the time the first pale streaks of dawn send the songbirds singing, my purpose is complete. I have given to nature, and she comes to claim my body among the decomposing soil and pillbugs. I am so tired. I crawl off the stone, my legs buckling under me.

I pray the ants find our bodies and tuck them into the earth’s egresses. I pray my children blossom like a galaxy of hundreds of stars. My ghost will be at the center of their constellations.

As my body cools and the last of my light sputters out, I float above the threshold of consciousness, letting go of the world. I did not die in bitterness. I hold fast to the memory of the heavy, humid nights, the scent of damp moss, the vibrating chorus of the grass, and the fleeting magic of the only dance that ever mattered.

I lived. I flashed. I was seen.

Summer was over, and so were we.