A new letter

I hope you are staying cool.

Well, the fireflies are finally leaving us. It happens every year, and every year I think it will never end. So much more charming than the damn tree frogs. I don't think it's the heat but the tree frogs, blanketing the night with their endless, self-important screeches, that drive the poor fireflies away.

But just in time the moonflowers are blooming. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to show them to you: they're so cool in this ridiculous heat. I see them, glancing up with their graceful flutes and I see the moon and I feel the cool whiteness. The one time a year the fireflies and snow may meet! They glow, too, until you forget it's dark.

I ran some of them over the other day in the car (stupid clumsy thing), and only then did I look and see how beautiful they are. They don't make an effort to be that way, they just grow into themselves. Solid, green leaves and limbs that support fragile blossoms, folded away in the day. It pains me a bit to see the blooms when they fall: they become such a sick yellow, and they give off a putrid smell. But do I regret having seen their beauty when they come to this end?

I dug out the weeds around the moonflowers and sickly vegetables, and I was shocked at the life hiding away in green. Crickets and beetles, spiders scrambling to find another dark spot. I wanted to put back what I had unearthed, witless and unaware. But they'll forgive me, or they won't think anything at all; they'll find that other dark spot and go on eating, living and then dying, like they always do. And they'll come back, and the snow, and the fireflies, too: undaunted, unhesitating and without purpose.

Another night passes and I hope you are well.