Rooftop Apiary at Dusk

At sunset the rooftops lift their tin shoulders, warm with the day's stored sunlight and engine breath. A keeper unlatches white boxes near the water tower; the city exhales, and thousands of wings answer.

They move through antennae and laundry lines as if reading a secret score in the evening air. Each body carries a dust-bright arithmetic from balcony basil, vacant-lot clover, cracked curb flowers.

Down on the avenue, buses kneel and rise, sirens braid red threads through glass. Above it, the hive hum deepens to one held note, a lantern made of muscle, pollen, and intention.

When night comes, the keeper closes the lid softly. Windows bloom with televisions, moons in little frames. Inside the comb, summer is stacked in amber syllables, and morning waits there, sweet, undeniable, alive.