We are both fireflies.

we are both fireflies/ in the starlight as our humming/ becomes the theme song/ in which we jacket ourselves

MY BUFFED UP LIFE SELECTIONS BY ERIK FUHRER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 91

SCAR TISSUE

INT. SHADOWPUPPET DARK - TIME?

In December 2019 Kim and I are at my mom’s house in New York celebrating the Christmas holiday with her and my grandparents. Mormor is having trouble recognizing me but she keeps sitting close to Kim, whom she has always loved, on the couch. She is laughing a lot. It is nice to see her happy. She notices I am wearing some bracelets, so she slips one off her wrist and onto mine. She tells me it goes with my blouse.

I could only hear “I have to treat Mormor like a retarded child” so many times before I couldn’t calm the echo of it from my own childhood. It’s humming a trauma, a gash. One night I took a short walk around my mom’s neighborhood. I distinctly remembered my friend accidentally riding his bike over my arm after I had fallen off my bike. There was quite a bit…