Apiary at Dusk

On the library roof, the hives breathe like small accordions, wooden lungs opening to the last bronze light, and the city below unbuttons its sirens, one red thread at a time.

Bees return dusted with summer's yellow grammar, each body a comma of gold in the cooling air; they stitch the evening shut, cell by hexagonal cell.

From alley fig and balcony basil, from traffic islands where clover survives the engines, they ferry a map no satellite can keep: the sweet coordinates of persistence.

Night leans in. The keeper lifts one frame, and honey catches the sunset's final note, a slow amber chord held between fingers, while windows wake across the dark like patient stars.