Wishing on a firefly

the first time i realized what hope actually looked like
I held lightning bugs in a water bottle on the beach of new york.
It was the beginning of summer but it was still raining
but it was more of a mist than anything
like the clouds wanted to kiss the earth but were too shy to make the first move
so they just leaned in and kept their chin tilted in the right direction

and i watched those little bugs flicker
realized that i couldn't see any of the stars through the thick stretches of cumulus that had accumulated above me
but i was holding pieces of the night sky in that empty water bottle
I had taken street lamp lights and captured them
no longer let them shimmer across the bay
the way they do when all other lights have gone out
creating ripples of bright streaks in the water
that never reached all the way over to where i was standing

I held wishes in my hands
because those fireflies had just fallen out of the space beyond us in the universe
and into my fingertips
so i watched their gossamer wings dance and asked them what secrets had been whispered to them
but I don't know if fireflies have ears
so i touched their antennas
hoping that they would be able to feel my curiosity
at the desires that had been cast at them by small children who look up when the moon rises
and say
star light star bright
first star i see tonight
wish i may
wish i might
have the wish i wish tonight

and send their thoughts up like balloons to reach into the heavens
but i never understood how wishes could get to the stars if they actually carried any weight
so i would imprint fingerprint promises to the backsides of coins and toss them into fountains
wait until the clock became a palindrome of one's
or hold my breath through a tunnel
to make the wishes i wanted so badly
until one day i figured i was too old to wish for things any more
so i put my thoughts onto scraps of paper like the insides of little future fortune cookies
tucked them into a jar
hoping that some day
i would find a carrier pigeon with strong enough wings to carry all my wishes to the stars

but when i held those lightning bugs
it was like I was a kid all over again
and i touched them with my jar of wishes and asked them to tell the other stars
how long I'd been waiting
to feel hopeful again.