After Learning Bees Were Associated with Love
During the Renaissance

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All morning my hands have been on my skin,

a conversation in longing with another person

in a different bed. Honey, I say to the open

window, I’m kind of buzzed for us.

          It seems impossible to hold sweetness

without the sting, but once two people embraced

during a gas leak and no one died. It was a longing

I hadn’t seen before, the pollen of rare plants.

          If I wanted to taste the nectar

of love, I’d leave the threads of my dress

in the garden of the woman I wish

to hold like a blossom. I curl my mouth

around a petal and deepen the bulb —

let the bees spin as I slip a song into her pocket.

          Maybe desire is what bees have, how

they communicate with each other through

dancing. A bedroom corsage of waltzing.

If I found a way to exist truthfully, I might

sip the honey directly from the hive.