The Bee Burial

On that day you kissed my mouth, a warm grape-water kiss
and we made camp under a violet sky
drinking red wine and searching the yard for faerie rings
and buried treasure, catching glimpses of beetles and shy slugs
and at least three pixies, before we found him:
a dead bumblebee
lying face-up, nestled amid a grassy forest
tiny legs folded in dignity over his body.

Perhaps the spiders and the earthworms had mourned him already,
but we still cried for him, and let the spring breeze kiss the dew
away from our cheeks.

We gave him a soldier's burial,
a single blade of grass laid across his chest like a sword,
with dandelions and buttercups wreathed around his shallow grave.
And we sang buzzing songs, pollen songs,
and we hummed as we knelt in the dirt, and we vowed
that he would not be forgotten.

On that day we were solemn and enchanted
with magic on our mud-stained hands, and gold dust
in our hair and eyelashes.
Time hung honey-thick in the air until we took a break for strawberries
and realized half a day had passed, and we were halfway closer
to some ordinary tomorrow,
and our reverie was slowly beginning to fade
like swimming back to the surface of wakefulness
after a long dream.

So we waited as long as we could,
lingering outside while a hazy twilight settled,
memorizing the burial songs we'd written, and letting our love story
spill wine-red onto the blanket we brought.

And even years later, sometimes the hum
of a honeybee's wings in the morning
still sounds like a resurrection.

150.

you are telling travel stories, and I can smell meadow grass on your breath
as you talk about your itching feet, how they won't stand still for long
and I can feel mine growing restless, too

so I walk outside for once
and I make it as far as the back porch,
sitting here trying to swallow some green air, something clean
to wash the tar from my lungs.

you talk about vastness, about immensity
and I can see it in your mouth when you open wide enough,
blue mountains behind your teeth

and something cracks in me
when I listen to your wilderness songs

somehow I am nine years old again
and I am watching the sun climb a Colorado horizon
crossing my heart and hoping we never go back to Texas
and then I am nineteen, hiking through Arizona
pressing the photographs I've taken into my chest and praying
that the images will transfer, and my skin will become canyon-colored
and then I am twenty-two in New Mexico
cheeks raw from mountain sleet,
and from laughing too hard

my feet are cramping in these high heels, and I am curious
what you can see in my mouth when I open wide
whether it is all cigarette butts
and broken glass
the blood I've swallowed

or whether there is still some blue sky
in the back of my throat

149.

I will lay soil all along the carpets and turn on all the lights in the house
because the twilight is blue outside my window and I am a mess
with only halves of words in my head

I have visions of myself covered in moss
walking on cracked twigs somewhere no one has heard my voice
and even here, I cannot see my fingers

I think something is wrong.
can't you just buy one or two cigarettes? why a whole pack?
I've still got a corner of clean lung to blacken but I don't need a whole pack for that

I like to imagine warm dirt tasting clean, though
that maybe swallowing some could help me feel older in a good way
and there is a whole bed of it waiting for me someplace

I just need some peace and quiet and a break from this silence
with everything pushing at my ears from the inside

I just need to crack some bones open, mine or yours
either way it might wake me up

148.

curling my toes into little fists like eyes shut tight
replaying all my best kisses, every butterfly I've swallowed
tugging at bed sheets alone like your skin,
like your shirt when I am asking you to please come back
and I fold myself deeper into blanket rolls and I remember
why I don't do this kind of thing anymore.

because too many sunlit moments get drowned in the cracks and fissures
between words, like too many smiles I've missed while I am
looking just past your shoulder.

I leaf through these days and weeks and push myself into crippled love affairs
and push myself out of your arms and into your arms and there is
so much that I skim through

or skip forward to cloudy lips on mine again with my eyes closed,
pillow hair between my thumbs and damp eyelashes
twisting myself further down into my sheets
holding my own hips and lying against this headboard like it is someone's chest
remembering why loving is such a bad idea while I am missing you so damn much