Rooftop Apiary at Dusk

At the top of the grocery, beside the humming vents, boxes of bees warm themselves in cedar light. Below, carts rattle through aisles of oranges and soap, while the city lifts its evening smoke like a veil.

A keeper in canvas gloves opens one bright kingdom; honeycomb shines, a cathedral built from weather. The bees thread gold stitches through traffic noise, mending the torn sleeve of August.

From billboard steel to basil pots, they map invisible rivers, taste rust, rainwater, clover from forgotten lots. Their bodies carry the rumor of fields into windows where insomnia sits with blue screens.

When night arrives, the hives become quiet lanterns. Somewhere a jar cools on a kitchen sill, thick with sunlight translated by a thousand wings, and morning already gathers in the dark.