Rooftop Apiary at Dawn

Morning unlatches itself on the tar roofs, bees lift like commas from painted boxes, their amber knees dusted with dandelion rumor, and the city exhales coffee through iron grates.

Between antennae and laundry lines they chart invisible highways of sweetness, threading past glass towers that hold small suns in every office window not yet awake.

I watch one land on my wrist, a brief engine, soft as a struck violin string; its wings write weather against my skin, then vanish toward a garden six blocks and one lifetime away.

By noon the hives hum like distant power stations, turning clover, exhaust, and rain into gold; somewhere a spoon will circle a teacup, and this morning will dissolve on someone's tongue.