We opened the wrappers of yellow lightsticks
and broke the plastic tubes — the sound
like knuckles popping, satisfying — to let
the glow loose. Threw them high
into the dark, to see their fluorescence against
the clouded sky. No moon. Hers had just fallen
to the lawn again when I tossed mine up
and it didn’t come down. Sideways, twenty feet high,
it moved along the air toward the branches
of the pecan trees, drew a neon trail
over the monkey bars my dad had built, then
dropped. She ran for the house, scared.
But I was busy: how had mine traveled? A bat
must have carried it off — flown thirty feet to be convinced
this was no snack — and let it fall. Triumphant,
already retelling the story to myself, I followed her
in to dessert, to the lit, warm space of my family,
suddenly terribly dull, even as the wand, touched
by the night world, began to fade in my hand.
– Anna Lena Phillips Bell from Ornament courtesy of University of North Texas Press
