Apiary Above Aisle Nine

At dusk, the supermarket roof hums with bees, white boxes lined where carts once nested snow. Below, the lot exhales warm gasoline, above, clover climbs the cracks like green smoke.

A keeper lifts a frame and the city brightens, honeycomb glowing like held cathedral glass. The queen moves through amber weather, small suns writing summer in six-sided script.

Traffic lights pulse red, then leaf-green, then gold; the hives answer in a deeper metronome. Pollen dust clings to wrists, to denim, to keys, a soft evidence that distance can bloom.

By night the jars cool on a kitchen sill, capturing rooftop wind, sirens, linden rain. When morning opens one, the whole block returns: asphalt, blossom, engine, wing, and light.