Rooftop Apiary in Fog

Before buses wake, the rooftops breathe in tin and frost. A beekeeper lifts each lid like opening a piano. Smoke threads the air, a low hymn of cedar and tea, and the hive answers with a bronze, waking chord.

Bees pour out, small sparks against the whitening river, mapping avenues by laundromat steam and church bells. Their bodies remember summer hidden in concrete, nectar from balcony thyme, from weeds in cracked medians.

At noon the city forgets them, but they keep stitching gold grammar between satellite dishes and cranes. Pollen dusts their knees like flour on a baker's apron; they carry whole neighborhoods home in silence.

By dusk the comb glows warm as subway windows. Honey thickens, amber weather saved in hexagons. Night folds its scaffolds and sirens into distance, and the roof hums softly, a second heart for the block.