Roof Garden, Midnight Pollinators

At midnight the rooftops open like accordions, and bees in velvet helmets rise from warm vents. They read the city by smell: diesel, basil, rain, a map written in sugar on the backs of neon signs.

On the twelfth floor, tomato vines lean over railings, their yellow stars ringing in the dark. Each blossom keeps a small lantern of pollen, and every landing is a soft brass chord.

Below, the avenues rehearse their siren hymn, buses exhale, windows blink and go blind. The hive remembers fields that are no longer fields, still it braids asphalt wind into honey.

By dawn, jars line the kitchen like captured weather: amber mornings, green afternoons, one thunderstorm. When I taste it, cranes turn slowly in my mouth, and the whole city hums from the tongue outward.