Rooftop Apiary at First Light

At six, the city loosens its metal jaw. I climb the fire-escape with a kettle of smoke. On tar-paper roofs, night still beads like oil. The hive hum starts before the traffic does.

Bees lift from their box as if unbuttoning gold. They comb the air between satellite dishes and laundry lines. Each body carries a map made of sun angles, a bright arithmetic no billboard can outshout.

Below us, buses kneel at red lights, doors sighing. Above us, linden blossoms open pale throats. The queen is hidden, a pulse in the dark center, while workers write daylight in wax and weather.

By noon my gloves smell of nectar and rust. I lean over the parapet, listening to their small engines. From this height, even grief finds a flowering crack. The whole block tastes, briefly, of honey and rain.