Apiary on the Thirteenth Floor

At dusk we climb the service stairs with buckets of smoke, past humming vents that taste of copper rain. The skyline opens like a drawer of knives and windows, and the hives begin their velvet engine-song.

Bees pour out, gold commas editing the wind, threading laundry lines, satellite dishes, basil pots. Below us, buses kneel and rise at every corner while pollen dust turns our sleeves to amber weather.

One queen walks her dark cathedral of wax, surrounded by attendants bright as struck matches. We lift a frame-warm, heavy, dripping June- and hear the city soften to one long vowel.

By midnight, jars cool on the concrete parapet. Moonlight settles in them, pale and patient. Tomorrow breakfast tables will taste of rooftop thunder, of clover found between antennas and stone.