Apiary on the Seventh Floor

Before sunrise, the elevator coughs me onto gravel. Between satellite dishes, hives hum like tuned cellos. Warm wax breathes through cedar seams; the city below is still trying on its voice.

Bees lift in amber commas, rewriting morning. They skim laundry lines, antennas, the lip of a church bell. Each body carries a speck of sun as if daylight were a powder they could spill anywhere.

At noon, traffic hardens to a metal river, but up here thyme flowers open in paint buckets. I taste smoke, honey, diesel in one bright spoon and hear the queen pulse through wood like distant thunder.

By dusk, the roofs become a dark archipelago. I seal the boxes; the hum folds inward, prayer-sized. Windows ignite across the avenues, and one late bee lands on my wrist, warm as a coin.