Apiary on the Tenth Floor

At dusk the office windows turn to shallow ponds, and on the roof the hives thrum like warm violins. Forklifts sigh below in the loading bays, while clover perfume climbs the fire escape.

Bees return dusted with the day's yellow weather, tiny astronauts backing into wooden dark. Their wings write silver commas in the heat, pausing where the city forgets its own name.

I lift a frame; honey gathers light like amber rain, thick as old records spinning in a kitchen. Sirens braid with swifts over satellite dishes, and every cell is a room the sun once rented.

Night leans in, blue and mineral, over brick and glass. The hives settle to a pulse I can stand beside. On my hands, wax and smoke and sweetness, proof that even here, something wild keeps time.