Stray firefly

 Oh, what I'd give to watch fireflies in my backyard, to see them, clustered around a shrub, an universe within a Universe.

Oh, I wish I could travel back into the summer of my childhood, just before the pre monsoons, in the bleak of the muggy night...with ritualistic power outage, a young me looking out of the balcony and witnessing in awe for a long time the busy bodies of starry-glow , gathered for their strange primeval dance of light.

The world on those nights seemed a little too big to the little me. The fireflies seemed the flag bearers of the exciting times of the future.

Time has passed, I have changed and so has the backyard. The little trees and shrubs have long gone. And the fireflies?... They seem to have moved on to other universes, far away from this banal neighbourhood and my very ordinary timeline. 

I do see fireflies once a monsoon, every other summer but now they don't form clusters, they seemed to have lost each others company. Now I only seem to greet a stray firefly once in a while. The stray firefly decides to show herself to me, a grace of sorts, travelling the gloomy night with no respite. 

The firefly, she travels alone, as if to show me that loneliness although bitter, it doesn't have to dim the light you carry within you.

The stray firefly, I see her on her own, just like me, she has learnt to glow in her own company... Despite an unpromising unfathomable night, the solo traveller, that she is, brings fullness to this bland existence and with her light, makes it bearable.