Loft of Glass Bees

On the warehouse roof, hives hum like engines cooling, rows of varnished boxes breathing the afternoon out. The river below is a strip of foil, wrinkled by wind, and the city keeps its teeth bared in the glass.

After dusk, the keeper climbs the ladder with a red lamp, each step a rung into a softer physics. Bees cluster at the entrance, a little galaxy of bodies, spinning a warm gravity in the cold air.

She opens a frame and the comb shines like a map etched in amber—streets without traffic, a quiet grid. Honey glazes her gloves; the smell is rain on concrete when the sun has already left, but the heat still remembers.

In the distance, trains stitch a seam of light and satellites move like slow, unblinking seeds. The hives settle; the city folds its wings. Night is a careful keeper, listening for the small engines.