Rooftop Apiary at Dawn

Before the sirens find their voice, the hospital roof breathes out warm metal, hives glow like small furnaces in mist, and bees lift off, comma-bright, into the waking air.

They thread between satellite dishes and laundry lines, past windows where night-shift nurses unpin their names, carrying pollen stolen from median-strip clover, a gold rumor moving through concrete.

Down on Eighth Street, buses kneel and exhale, fruit vendors rinse peaches in blue buckets, and every blossom in a cracked planter opens as if hearing a distant violin.

By noon the city tastes faintly of thyme, sweetness hidden inside exhaust and rainwater. On the roof, a keeper tilts a frame to the sun: honey, thick as afternoon light, answering the noise.