rejectomorph | Fragments

Windows go dark one by one. Porch lights wink out, allowing small patches of yards and bits of trees vanish. The stars grow brighter. I think about the June bug. It was at my aunt's house in Gardena. I had never seen a June bug before, and the sight of its bulbous body and the buzz of its wings as it circled the naked bulb of the porch light surprised me. My female cousins squealed and tried to shoo it off when it came near them. Beyond the reach of that light, the old neighborhood was a patchwork of other lights and deep shadows, white wood siding, twisted tree limbs, picket fences, weedy lawns. The place smelled of old houses and grass and parked cars and the tar of the street not yet cooled from the vanished summer sun. I walked into the darker part of the yard and heard the drips falling from a leaky hose bib, and somewhere down the block a dog barked once. I couldn't have been more than five years old. This scene, like a disconnected and inexplicable clip from a movie, just came to me, for no apparent reason. Odd.