Rooftop Apiary

At dawn the rooftop hives unfasten their brass hum. Steam from laundromats climbs and braids with wings. Between satellite dishes, marigolds hold little suns. The skyline tastes of rain and warm metal.

Bees map the avenues by smell: diesel, linden, bread. They skim bus mirrors, neon puddles, church stone. A siren opens like a red flower below them, then folds back into traffic and pigeons.

At noon the keeper lifts a frame, amber dripping slow as violin resin, slow as summer speech. Thousands of bodies write one shimmering sentence across the air nobody owns.

By evening, glass towers darken to black water. In each hive, the day is fanned into honey. On my tongue: thyme, rust, and thunder. The city keeps one wild heart, hidden and gold.