Had you been a dragonfly, I might have known how to stay with you. I might have transformed my views on the fragility of a macroinvertebrate, since you were stronger than anything I knew. The strength your body had gave you the ability to evolve through incomplete metamorphosis, while I could transform nothing besides my thinking. Nothing but the insignificant fluctuation of my thoughts and beliefs. Your wings had the strength of a spider’s silk even though they seemed as delicate as ribbon candy. Their woven membranous threads were so intricately veined that they glittered in the sun. Had you been a dragonfly, I might even have known that your wings bore the strength of gold.
I might have remembered that I should only spend time on what was important and leave all the uninvited noise in the background. I might have spent our time better, indifferent to the worries of what was in the past, and not worrying about what was possibly to come, or about what may never come at all. You were so lucky. Your nervous system shut out the chatter from the backdrop. It made you so different from me. You could so easily shed the unknown. I wish I had also learned to be in the present. I would have then spent it with you, always.
I would have spoken more freely and directly in our conversations, knowing I would only have you for a short time. I might have told you every single day about how much I loved you and just how much you meant to me if I’d known you might only be with me for fifty-six days. I would have made absolute certain that you were never unsure about where we stood. I would have trusted the knowing that you had used your flight patterns to discern whether I was the one for you, the one you wanted forever. Had you been a dragonfly, that is.
I used to sit under the stars, in the dying light of the evenings, and watch as you would dart into the shadows. You would ask me to come with you, to feel the obscurity of the nights. It felt so frightening, I was so unexperienced. But if I had known of your migratory journey, of the eighteen thousand kilometers you flew just to find me, I would have been secure. I could have flown with you, my pantala flavescens. I would have known how wonderful that would feel, those endless nights with you in the dark. They would have become my salvation as I rested upon your agile wings.
Had you been a dragonfly, I might have listened more intently to your words, and to your actions when you were showing me your gripping love, proving to me again and again that there was nobody else besides me. I might have believed you, instead of being caught up in my own insecurities. I would have known that to you, I was almost as important as water and air, just as you were for me.
I might have spent time with you while you were a nymph, understanding how lucky I was. I would have watched your exoskeleton break open, releasing your abdomen which had been packed in like a telescope, before finally allowing you to take your first breath. Something I at times took for granted. I would have watched in awe as your wings came out and spread open to their sixteen-inch span, drying until they hardened. A teneral maturing into life, I could have sat and watched you target your prey. It would have fulfilled me, watching the way your mask folded beneath your head and thorax before exposing your fangs.
I would have reminded myself that when you were watching me, the thousands of facets of your eyes were not only watching my light but also seeing our future. Knowing somehow that you could use your interception paths to know where I’d be before I even knew myself. I could only imagine our future together, but you had the ability to see it. Even after you fleeted past, you would still follow along and watch me in your spherical field of vision. You were a visionary, 30,000 pixels of sight while my eyes had begun to fade.
I used to be enraptured in how you would fly, straight up into the sphere of sky or hovering by my side. When I was watching you weave through time and space, I would have sat in awe at your beautiful patterns of ceaseless movement. I would have marveled at your fluidity without fearing you would fly away and not come back. I would have known you were territorial, that you felt I was in fact home for you, just as I felt you were for me. It was like watching magic, your wing venation gave you magic in flight. Sometimes we would fly from the early morning dew until the birds stopped singing before dark. Spiraling in slow motion, your voracious energy was always directed only at me. When you would approach me from behind, clamping four forearms into my neck, I would not have jolted in fear of you wishing I were someone else. I would have melted into your vicious bite of subdue, and stayed in our tandem wheel of flight for as long as you would want it to last. I would have eaten you alive. Had I been a dragonfly that is.
I might have understood that while I often felt cold, you needed that extra chill in the weather to keep the gold bright in your wings. I wouldn’t have complained nor nagged on about needing more heat. I would have instead saved my energy and not overheated your exothermic body.
Had you been a dragonfly, I would have built you a pond in our yard. One which was surrounded with the lushest greens, thick and filled with nutrients for you. Ones which you could hide in should you need, the vegetation thick and swaying in the breeze where they would whistle during the hours of dusk. I would have made sure nothing could ever hurt you or take you away from me.
I might have made sure that I would have the same lifespan as you. I would have sat by the pond every day, ready to end my days when yours were ended. There would be no place I’d ever want to be, than by your side. Had you been a dragonfly, that is.
I would have embraced your metallic body into mine when I noticed you losing your liveliness. When I saw you needed protection from the winds and the world. When I noticed your strong colors fading into a dull brass, I would have remembered the chitin crystals in your wings were diminishing, that the secretion which protected your vibrancy was washing away. I used to think of the last time your eyes set on me, and tears fell. I don’t remember which of us cried. But I remember you somersaulted backward. Then you looked at me, and slowly dove head-first. And then you were gone. Like dust. I would have caught you in your fall if I could have saved you. If I had known to catch you. Had you been a dragonfly, that is.
