A Short Story by Jack Mint
I caught the dragonfly by the tail, then cupped my hands around it. Like a kid, I opened a slit in the fingers to glimpse my prisoner. The wings remained intact through the capture. The alien eyes and antennas rolled and conducted themselves in the claustrophobic environment. Unique to the disposition of dragonflies is the track of their movements. Posted on a blade of grass they rest like statues in forgotten gardens of ancient Greeks. But once an unworldly wind motivates the dragonfly, it takes flight in the most erratic, chaotic course. A statue to a drug fiend.
The prisoner began a terrified flight as my palms slid across each other. Pincered gently in my fingers, I held it out to my girlfriend. An uncomfortable look came on her face once her eyes came upon the creature.
“It’s a dragonfly,” I said.
“Let it go.” She said but didn’t look at me. Her eyes were on the insect, as it remained so still that it looked like a toy.
A perverse thought buzzed in my mind that I should crush the dragonfly and feel the juices squish into the canyons of my fingerprint. The legs and wings would have one last struggle as life pumped itself out. But my eyes would be locked onto her face, her reaction. Witness her horror. A statue to a widow.
My fingers parted and the dragonfly didn’t wait for me to change my mind. The four wings propelled the little bug and joined the hundreds of others over the desert pond. Joy filled my heart by the recognition of the second chance. So much more is in life and light. Dragonflies scurried and tiny frogs plopped the water by our feet. Grass drank up the bank while water, the church of creation, lived like the stars do.
What made this more magical was the position of the oasis. High desert surrounded this hidden grove she and I found. Oppressive heat waited outside our respite. The living skeletons of cacti held out their hands like Keats did in the unnerving poem, “This Living Hand”. Long after my girlfriend and I leave and the pond dries into the bones of frogs, the crowds of cactus will still be as heinous.
“We should’ve gone to Virginia Beach instead.”
My girlfriend tilts her head. “I really like this trip so far. It reminds me a lot of home.”
The Atlantic wasn’t threatening like this place was. It didn’t lure you into the contrasts of abundant life amidst a graveyard. The Atlantic was honest and just commercial enough to be safe all the time.
But she had insisted.
Her skin was pale sand I could drag my fingers across and imagine dust trails following. Her hair was the chariot of Apollo. Wavy sunrays on the vastness of her smile that also devoured her countenance until there was only a single opinion I could ever have of her.
She was just so . . .
unfinished.
