Rooftop Apiary at Midnight

On the hospital roof, hives breathe in warm rectangles, vent fans turning like distant tidemills. The city below clicks its teeth of traffic, and every window keeps a different weather.

Bees return heavy with neon pollen, powdered gold stolen from balcony basil, from the thin republic of weeds in gutters, from one magnolia stubborn at the bus depot.

I lift a frame; it drips with amber circuitry. Workers write hexagons faster than worry, each cell a room for future sunlight, each wingbeat a small insistence against sirens.

Before dawn, jars line up like captured lanterns. Nurses will spoon this darkness into tea. Morning will call it sweet and ordinary. No one will taste the rooftops and rain.