Mirage.

and, it's okay.

Two fireflies are hovering above my eyes. And, I am watching them thither. They are teasing me, taunting that I spread my fingers towards them and try to catch the flutter of their luminescent wings. But I don't. Instead, I worry about what has been worrying you, what did you mean, when you said that it had been a rough couple of months.

I frown, and my fireflies frown upon me, impatiently. I recognize impatience. Often, I get impatient while I'm smoking, because I want the cigarette to be over quickly, so that I don't have to stare at the smoke rising up and vanishing into the air that settles on my moist hair. Sometimes, I get impatient while watching a movie, hoping that it would climax soon, so that I can finally revel in the conclusion.

But, I am hardly impatient with people. I wait for them, I am so patient with people who don't falter at pulling the trigger. I am patient in bleeding out, and staining my hands with my own blood, with wounds that are partly slashed by me. I am very patient with being hurt, with my warped thoughts. I am patient at hoping for all the wrong things, for all the wrong choices, the second choices, the choices that never manifest.

I am not waiting for you. I don't have to. I have found my pace and I am moving along. Sometimes, however, I wonder, what you have been up to. Bad habits don't die, my cigarettes do, but I have a never ending supply to all things harmful.

I hate you, I do. But. I don't. I am not a person who builds up hatred in their veins, I do with nonchalance better. And, I somewhat am, nonchalant about you. But I am not. I could never be. You mattered once upon a time, you don't now, but you did and that's why I wonder what was rough for you. Because, I was the one who kept hovering above the edge, of mental breakdowns, and relapsing into depression. I don't care enough, anymore. But I do. A little. I always will perhaps, for the wrong people, for the right people, for people and fireflies. I hope you have braved the rough and found a patient summer, but you were always the impatient kind. The one month trial and error kind. The obstinately selfish kind. And, I too have been kind, but for other obtrusive reasons. And, it's okay. I don't care how you are now, I know you are, somewhere. Planning of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. It's okay. You weren't the one to see things for yourself, until too late, but you were so quick to never acknowledge your faults.

Rough, smooth, monotonous, hardly matters to you. You have your own pace. And your own peace and that's all you've ever cared about. And, it's okay. Because, I learnt to care about my own peace too, about not disrupting anyone else's peace. About being obstinate. I missed out on the selfish part, or else I would not have been able to worry a flimsy worry about you. And, it's okay.

The fireflies too worry about my unyielding fingers. But I know, my fingers have touched other flimsy things; you, a certain slice of darkness, snow, fallen pine cones. And it's okay.

The fireflies stop hovering too. They stop blinking. Their light stops, like the red in the traffic which halts so many lives at one go, uncaring whether it has any life changing experience upon the drivers. And, it's okay. You didn't change my life either. And, I didn't change yours. I didn't change the darkness that the fireflies call home. I didn't change my home. And it's okay. The fireflies had always come to visit me, in home. They had always come to share my darkness and my insomnia, and my warped thoughts. The streetlight had always tried to intrude but, the fireflies always burnt brighter when I wouldn't disrupt their flight, and they would flee, disappointed like you did. And it's okay.

The blinking of the fireflies is inconsistent too. I am inconsistent too. My worries are inconsistent too. Your feelings are inconsistent too. Your feelings were just lies you spun on vines of orchards, and hung upon the bonsai that was blooming in my chest, between my ribcage, using the ashes of my lungs as manure. And, it's okay. We all need a tree to shade the fireflies in daytime. We all need lungs exploding with leaves and flowers and debris of broken twigs and all the discarded love notes. The fireflies discard darkness too. And they hover above my eyes. And it's okay.

Unlike Gatsby, I don't long for the light. I don't long for you. You don't long for me, like you had wondered how people couldn't. And it's okay. This is not what Fitzgerald would have written. Accidents and murders and suicides and stories happen. But only they don't. And it's okay. The fireflies too don't, they don't cease to tease me, to amuse me, to hover, to blink, to be inconsistent, and flimsy. And it's okay. They are just fireflies. That is what they are evolved to do. To cut the night, one blink a time. To tease me, one fluttering at a time. And it's okay.
They are just fireflies.