Rooftop Apiary

At dawn the rooftops unbutton their tar-black shirts, and hive boxes breathe warm cedar into the cold. Smoke lifts in a pale ribbon, a quiet instrument, while traffic below tunes itself to a harder key.

Workers rise like sparks from a struck match, threading laundry lines, satellite dishes, prayer flags. Their bodies write cursive over brick and glass, a gold grammar no billboard can counterfeit.

I watch them return heavy with the taste of linden, their legs dusted yellow as if from old manuscripts. Each landing is a small percussion on the frame, a door opening, closing, opening again.

By noon the jars hold a slow sun of their own, thick and amber, storing the map of many flowers. In every spoonful: alley wind, iron fire escapes, and the bright, stubborn labor of a borrowed sky.