Borrowed mourning before a funeral

Katie Finn Hurst

The mind is a mason jar, 

Holes punched carelessly in the lid 

Giving meager breath to fireflies 

Stuffed inside by short, sticky fingers 

Of children lost in bliss; 

July heat cooling— the unspoken promise:

Fireworks. 

You remind me of those lightning bugs;

Voice blending with the chorus of cicadas—

The joking laugh, that mad giggle 

firing like flowers from a magician’s hand

Made me believe that you, too, 

Were just a child Chasing lights 

In the honeyed Tennessee dusk. 

That was a life ago. 

I borrowed a dress for your funeral 

And slid my feet into big shoes;

Slicked black lashes veiled baby blues Hiding from the truth: 

You must have gone where the fireflies do,

Put to rest after summer is spent. 

Too old, too slow to catch them now,

I watch the fireworks, skipping 

The prelude: dancing in the yard 

Between stars rising into the oak leaf canopy. 

Hurl gold coins into the wide-mouthed sky,

Try and trade their value for time. 

Fireworks are a poor-man’s firefly.