eulogy for a piece of the sun

bleeding hard and streaming saltwater. gutted the first top-bar beehive, once lover, wracked with this sobbing. so fragile, cracking wax chambers. seams of dark resin. beautiful comb - whites yellows oranges browns rusts, whorls & folded & fluted chambers, i can see where she was hatched. they almost made it through.

the back of the box, where i always pressed my ear to hear the thrumming (the shifting pitch, the messages!), was where i found the entrapment of their many bodies. scented of fishy death & mold, wet
colors of the gone. once they smelled like sugared heat and oozing buds and flecks of juicy light and yes yes yes. now it's different.

i am already wrapped in the big sweater (the one for mental health emergencies, color of my mother's eyes, this isn't the only loss of late), reaching out/withdrawn. eating knife-point droplets of honey, all that's left, and the only i ever tasted from them. maybe there's 3 drops. they came on the full moon eclipse in june almost 3 years ago. flew from the forest and landed right above my pile of wood and screws, we stayed up all night laughing drinking tea transforming the pile into a home, before dawn we saw through the window that the quiet man came unhinged and murdered our rooster. at dawn we placed them facing east at the bottom of the garden, said good morning. said you can stay if you like. said i'm sorry i'm not a carpenter really but there's hope in these angles, in these stripped screws, and it'll be different for you than it was for the rooster. said how the fuck do we trust anyone anyway maybe you can teach me how? said i don't know why but i already love you. said you are so, so necessary.

i loved them long through two wild queens, snows and summer slumber, whispering my secrets and travel plans and promised that i would always come back here as long as i was theirs. even when they were the only ones in this clusterfuck collective to whom i felt actually connected, sometimes.

i watched their pollen streaming legs, wings glinting whirring with the light, made offerings, buried some dead, brought lovers and friends and songs. i think they knew about the way i smell, especially when i'm being brave, in all this femme seriousness with a short skirt and bare arms and feet and crown of bees, landing all over my neck and thighs. (i liked the way we fucked: sometimes i didn't want others always watching and would offer myself to you late in the night). bees don't sleep, they just get closer and quieter. some hardened parts of me always melting as i marvelled at their golden fur, their spangled bridges through air and time and nectar flow and all my ragged stories, doubts.

one summer i slept beside them every night, my spine was hewn of that stony mound and i loved them through the aching in my bones, i loved them through the soggy blankets i had dragged down the hill. i dug that garden, brought them calendula and tulsi and lavender and lemon balm and yarrow. there is so much i didn't do or know and still don't. thank you for that magic, your death is a hollow ringing louder than the emptiness of your old home.