Lightning Bugs and Swamp Exploration Leisha R. Mitchem
Dusk comes, a gentle snuffing, leading night slowly forward. They are filthy, the boys and her, covered in muck and mud and mosquito bites after exploring the marshes. They stumble into a clearing along the river, a mile from Lake Rebekah, filled with snake grass that breaks with a wet pop between knuckles, Now a dash— for the mound of sand the city dumped here last summer. The boys remove t-shirts, heavy with sweat, their square shoulders hunched like the last curve of the sinking sun, still learning to fill the man’s shape. They climb to the top and run and jump and flip down the sides, perhaps for the girl and her cut offs cut too short or maybe for the boys left alive inside. Then, as the light fades behind the Mississippi, they rub cool sand on the bites and, engulfed in night, become surrounded by a sea of speckled light.
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