then my father bought me a yellow and clear plastic bug keeper.
after that i would create lives for my friends in this miniature habitat.
i had two fascinations: bugs and dinosaurs. and since dinosaurs were extinct,
and i had deemed bugs more manageable, i caught bugs.
this was my first experience with love.
i could never let them go. and thimble fulls or bottle caps
of water were never sufficient to preserve their existence.
so it was sad, but i couldn't let them go. i would rather
see them grow feeble and fail in front of my eyes than let them fly
away, and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of this.
no matter how sad it was to watch them die, i could not watch them go.
and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of love.
it made my father sad, to watch these events unfold.
and now, looking back, i know where all the grasshoppers, moths,
caterpillars and frogs disappeared to while i left them unattended as i slept.
when i was eleven and it was summer, i went to Jake's house for the night.
and his step-dad got mad when we played nintendo in the basement
while Jake was supposed to be cooking his step-dad's dinner.
and that night we chased the winking lights in the dusk by the power lines,
and we captured almost twenty fireflies, which we put in a jar with holes
in the lid, which we left by the window. and for the first time
in our lives, we stayed up through the entire night.
and as the bugs' lights began to dim, Jake suggested that we release them.
so we walked through his yard in the dew and the mist and for the first time
in our lives, we stood in silence and watched the sun rise, as the fireflies
fluttered away feebly. although i had no idea why, for the first time
in my life, i felt very melancholy, a word i couldn't have defined.
and i haven't caught a single firefly since that night,
we grew up, Jake and i, and we left bugs behind.
but more important than that, i think i'm too scared to try.
and that, i think, is the really fucked up part of life.
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