The Dragonflies in the Rice Field

There was a field behind our grandparents' house in the province. A wide one, green and glimmering, where the rice stalks swayed and the dragonflies danced. Back then, we were just kids—barefoot, loud, and always in trouble for staying out too long. My cousins and I would chase dragonflies until our legs were scratched from the grass. We’d run along the muddy dikes, pretend we were explorers or heroes or just anything we wanted to be. Our grandparents were always waiting. Our grandma would cook lunch and wake us up in the mornings with the smell of garlic rice. Our grandpa would sit by the window, pretending not to smile when we ran past. The whole neighborhood was filled with voices— kids shouting from nearby houses, aunts gossiping by the water pump, grandparents calling us in before the sun disappeared. But everything is quieter now. We’re older, scattered in cities with work to do and alarms instead of birds. No more cousins running around barefoot. No more children laughing in the fields. The trees still stand, but no one climbs them anymore. The dragonflies are gone. Still, when I come back and walk through that old field, I see us. Running, chasing, shouting, laughing. Worrying only about how to sneak out again after lunch, and what game we’d play next. And sometimes I wonder— maybe if we had just let the dragonflies fly freely, just watched them instead of trying to catch them, they might still be here. Maybe they’d still come back, like we did.