I doubt Ernest would believe it

 

Ernest Hemingway once wrote about a clean, well-lighted place.  My adventure didn’t take place in a café, but for whatever reason, what happened brought this story to mind.

It was winter and as I stood outside enjoying the silent falling snowflakes, I stuck out my tongue, like some little kid, to catch a snowflake on it.  Much to my surprise, instead of a snowflake, a firefly landed on it and in its attempt to get out of the cold, quickly made its way further into my mouth.

I had not noticed any of this until a friend, standing near to me said I had rays of light shooting out from my nostrils, but only occasionally.  Of course, I thought he was joking, until a second friend also noticed the same strange phenomenon.

Never had I ever seen a firefly during the winter, so the thought that it was one of those causing light to shoot out from my nose didn’t occur to me.

    I excused myself, coughing politely into the snow, but nothing came up. No bug, no wings, no flicker of light. Just the crisp silence of winter and the growing suspicion that something truly strange had happened. My friends, bless their immaturity, began debating whether I was some kind of seasonal lantern or a possessed snowman.

    It wasn’t until later that night, lying in bed with the lights off, that I noticed a soft glow illuminating the ceiling—faintly pulsing, and unmistakably coming from me.

    The firefly, it seemed, had taken up residence somewhere in my sinuses. Not dead, just... relocated. And whether it was warming itself or simply confused, it was now blinking its slow, glowing code inside my head.

    In the stillness of that winter night, I realized I’d become my own clean, well-lighted place, and oddly, I wasn’t alone.