Apiary Over the Floodplain

At dusk the rooftops unzip their tin throats, and hives hum like harmoniums warming in rain. Smoke from the river curls around antennae, a soft gray glove over the city's pulse.

Bees rise through steam from laundries and kitchens, gold commas stitching weather to brick. They taste rust, linden, diesel, late pear, then carry the evening home on their legs.

Inside the comb, dark syrup remembers distances: balcony basil, cemetery clover, schoolyard thyme. Each cell a lantern where summer keeps breathing, small suns stacked in patient architecture.

When sirens pass, the hive does not argue. It leans into thunder and keeps making sweetness. By midnight the moon hangs in a bucket of tar, and every window drinks a little amber light.