Rooftop Apiary at 2 A.M.

On the seventeenth floor, the hives breathe like accordions, warm cedar boxes sweating under satellite dishes. Below, traffic combs the avenues with amber teeth, and the river turns in its sleep, a strip of dark tin.

We lift the lids and midnight rises, winged and patient; thousands of bodies tuning one low cathedral note. Smoke curls from the can, a thin blue hand that teaches panic how to fold itself smaller.

Pollen clings to my sleeves like borrowed sunlight. In glass towers, cleaners drag moons across the windows. The queen moves somewhere inside that gold weather, an unseen pulse keeping the whole roof from going silent.

By dawn, jars line up on the parapet, heavy as small planets. Each one holds clover, diesel, rain, and rusted fire escapes. When morning opens its pale mouth over the city, we carry summer downstairs, one bright weight at a time.