The Body and the Bee

You were supposed to stay forever, not until death do us part, I was always meant to go first.

I sit here looking at the lifeless bee on the windowsill,

Wings of dust, a husk, and no flight left in this shell.

I'm mesmerized by its small and fragile mechanics, how fearsome it was when it buzzed and whirled, chasing the dog, defying spider webs, its wings a drone of noise to my ears as I defended myself from its life shattering sting,

And now it is nothing, just a weightless wasted lost body.

I fear that if I touch it, it might, you might, move a limb, a singular sign, a white flag, a ghost in the machine,

So instead, it stays there, you lay there, my hands cold from the clenching onto thin air.

My mind knows. My brain comprehends what I must do, cannot avoid, and yet here I am, 5 hours later, staring into the vast space you used to fill.

I know.

I know you are gone.

My heart is numb. It would forget to beat if I didn't heave this emptiness up and down and up and down. I am holding back a flood until later, not now, it can't come now, must do the paperwork on this body first.

The voices say the same thing, with tilted heads and flowers,

For hours

The phone is ringing like it is underwater, in the distance, away from this windowsill.

Must hold back the flood until the darkness comes.

I will my feet to move. I walk around you to the Bee. I gently pick it up by its wings, as light as a feather without life, and place it gently in my palm.

Its smallness is what breaks the gate. I feel the swell, the weight,

The flood raises, no warning.

Breath heaves,

Mouth opens without sound to leave it,

And then the bee is wet, becoming heavier in my palm, its wings slowly lowering to its back,

I crack.

Into a million shards, the flood gate so wide it cannot be closed.

I turn to face you, your skin and bones, but you are gone,

How can you be gone?

How dare you be gone?

How dare you.

I place the bee on your pillow; its sodden body now full of weight that is missing from yours.

The flood becomes rain, and rain becomes droplets,

You are not so small next to the Bee,

Not so gentle or fragile either.

Suddenly, You are stronger than this body and I feel,

Yes I feel you stand tall beside me.

The mere thought of you still here makes me turn my head sideways, you always are, were, so tangible. I talk to your ghost, I tell you off and point to the body you shed in such swiftness,

I'll miss this...

And then I am alone again with the body and the bee.

My headaches,

My heart breaks.

I guess now, there's only me.

I look outside,

A thousand bees alive,

But it was this one, this you that has died.

It suddenly all looks so vast,

My breathing turns to rasp.

I guess I have also shed a skin,

How will this new version of me fit in?

And suddenly my thoughts race,

I panic, can't keep the pace,

I need

Space.

I need,

Embrace.

How can you not be here to wipe the tears from my face?

Breathe.

Shut eyes, swollen and puffy eyes,

Breathe.

Enter the room; I guess this will all be over soon.

They take you away, but the folds in the sheets suggest your shape to still be there.

Only your ghost lies in this bed now,

And next to you, a tiny bee,

in a vast, starched, White Sea.

I stare with these new eyes through old people; I have not yet formed my new life sentences, the ones that define me after you... I remember the bee drowning in my palm, how I gave it the necessary weight.

I stare down at my hand, clutching ghosts,

I close my fingers around the thought of you, and place you against my chest.

I guess now, I let you go,

And lay you,

And I,

And the Bee

To Rest.