Apiary on the Ninth Floor

At noon the city lifts its tin shoulders, and our rooftop hives breathe cedar and sun. Bees stitch gold commas through laundry lines, pausing at tomato blossoms in paint buckets.

Below us, traffic grinds pepper into the air; above, the glass towers hold weather like drums. Each wingbeat is a struck string, small and exact, a bright insistence against the siren tide.

We open a frame: warm light combed into hexagons, summer stored as if time could be folded. Honey runs amber over my knuckles, and the day smells of iron, thyme, and rain not yet fallen.

At dusk the swarm returns, soft as poured grain. Windows ignite one by one along the river. In the hive's dark cathedral, the queen keeps singing, and night learns the shape of sweetness.