Apiary Above the Laundromat

At six, the roof is a shallow pan of blue tin. Beneath me dryers turn galaxies of socks and static. A row of hives warms like accordions in sunlight. Their wooden throats begin to hum open.

Bees lift, comma by comma, into steam from vent pipes. They thread between satellite dishes and pigeon feathers. On each leg, yellow saddlebags of dandelion. The city, for once, smells like clover and soap.

I pry a frame loose: hexagons bright as wet amber. Inside, thousands of mouths making one patient engine. No queen visible, only her grammar everywhere, eggs set like white notes on a staff of wax.

By noon the asphalt below blares sirens and deliveries. Up here, nectar thickens, a slow gold weather. I close the hive and carry home one jar of afternoon, sunlight translated into something you can spread on bread.