Apiary on the Ninth Floor

At dusk the office windows turn to watered copper, and on the ninth-floor roof the hives begin their low violin. Bees return wearing pollen like amber dust on work boots, crossing the hot tar sea as if it were a meadow remembered.

Someone below drops a tray of glasses; the sound climbs, shards of evening ringing between satellite dishes. Mint in cracked planters lifts a green, cool breath, and the city exhales diesel, rain, and bakery sugar.

I lift a frame, and the comb glows cathedral-gold, hexagons packed with weather, distance, flower names. Each cell holds a map too small for grief to enter, yet my hands come away sticky with a summer already leaving.

Night writes itself in blue ink over cranes and bridges, the hives settle to a patient, electrical hum. From this height even traffic learns to move like water, and one late bee circles my wrist, choosing where to land.