In the grass, reliably damp in the twilight blue beneath
our naked feet, their limply blinking abdomens
seemed missionaries of the stars. With reaching hands,
clasped like prayer, we stole their frail bodies,
rendered relics of holy flame. They clung to one another.
Our desperate hands ushered their accumulation,
a living hourglass of light and crumpling wings.
We thought ourselves gods with saints on our fingers,
but now, in this new grass in the maw of the sky with you,
I see that we are fireflies, not stars but fragile bundles
of wings and lungs that need space more than heaven, need air
more than fire, release more than love. Left blinking
for our sleeping gods, we suffocate. Sacrificial living things.