I Met a Ladybug Yesterday

I met a ladybug yesterday.

But not just any ladybug, one I had been thinking about for a whole week. One I was almost certain would cancel on me, because the wind these days can carry beautiful things wherever it wants.

I had questions prepared. Do you really bring good luck? Do you choose where your beauty spots go? Do you ever hide them under something? I rehearsed my smile, at least as a cover for my nervousness. And I made a promise to myself: don’t let her know how excited you are.

I arrived at the tree first. My brain wandered the way brains do when they have too much time and too much hope. What if she changes her mind? What if it’s not a ladybug at all, but a butterfly? Is that why I have butterflies in my stomach? Then my phone rang, ding ding, and the message said, sorry, I’ll be a little late. Of course. I knew those questions were not random. But I stayed, because even if all I got was one minute, I wanted to at least know how she smelled. Just enough luck to carry me through the week.

“I’m here,” she said. I looked around and saw nothing. Do ladybugs even fly at night? And then, finally, there she was, right in front of me, with a face so open and alive that every nerve in my body just settled. I smiled, with my real smile, not the rehearsed one.

Right there, I knew this would be an evening I would never forget.

We sat and ate ice cream. Butterscotch has never tasted like that before, or maybe my taste buds were simply under the influence of all that beauty sitting across from me. Which made me think: what does a ladybug eat? Does she feed on conversation, or on the hunger in the eyes of the man sitting in front of her? I don’t know why I was so talkative. I don’t know why I didn’t want to go quiet. Did she notice that I wished she was sitting closer?

“Can I smell you?” she asked. She leaned in, and she did.

I still don’t know how I smelled. Like a man and vaseline, probably. Or like peace. Like softness. Maybe like a safe space. I had to smell her back, I am obsessed with fairness, fill my cup and I’ll fill yours, so I leaned in too. She smelled like the part of heaven where God removes his shoes before entering. I closed my eyes without meaning to. A very normal thing to do when a scent is that good.

At some point, the ladybug landed on my face. With her eyes. I could feel them move from my lips to my left cheek and all the way up to my eyes, and I wondered what was going through her mind. Did my lips look like they had something to say? Would they have tasted like the butterscotch ice cream I’d just eaten, or like lips that have never told a lie?

The night moved from topic to topic. I tried to fly with her and it felt effortless. Even when the words dried up, it didn’t feel awkward, it felt more like we could just be, and I wondered if my thoughts in those quiet moments were too loud for her to hear.

“Will I ever see you again?” I asked, hoping for more luck another day.

“Only if you ask,” she answered.

Which felt like a challenge and a gift at the same time, because it wasn’t no. Even though I half-expected her to say she’d think about it, I left that sentence feeling hopeful.

Then it came to us that we had to leave. I honestly didn’t want the night to end.

“Can I have a hug?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she said.

The thing about hugging a ladybug your own height is that you are actually hugging each other. Not the sideways Sister Rebecca hug. A real hug. A hug hug. Which, if I’m honest, broke my heart a little, because the moment I stepped out of it, I already wanted back in. So I asked for another, and one more after that, and still it wasn’t enough to fill the space that hadn’t been held in a while.

I walked back home, wondering if she was watching and already moving in a different direction. Wishing I could ask for one more hug. Left with nothing but my memory and a film playing in my head of everything that could have happened if we had found each other a little sooner.

Then my alarm went off. My phone was buzzing on the bedside table. The ceiling was still the same familiar white, and there was no ladybug in sight. I lay there for a moment, trying to hold on to the dream before it dissolved into thin air.

Yesterday I met a ladybug. And somehow, that remains my favourite day of the my life.