matchbook

e were having breakfast and the spoon was dripping with honey. And my husband asked: ‘Can you think of any insect other than the bee which makes something for us to eat?’ I thought of the uselessness of the fly, the ugliness of the mosquito, the terrifying industry of the ant. I said, simply: ‘No’ but felt that my secret was out.

It’s been some time now I’ve been thinking bees. Ever since I—we—lost the baby, our girl, my husband and I talk to each other less and less. I take out my notebook and make untidy, haphazard notes: The queen bee is the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. She can produce over 3000 eggs in a single day at the peak of her laying, more than her own body weight in eggs. Pheromone.

Mostly we give each other a look that hurts, an empty glance, a tense smile—as if we shouldn’t smile, not after this—or a slight touch and a recoil from it. Or perhaps there’s another woman. The silence of my mouth has the smell of milk gone bad. I spit breakfast into the sink as soon as he’s gone, sick with the way my stomach churns as if she’s still inside, the way my body oozes sweat and my armpits stick to my sides when I remember.

Pheromone is gold and the queen on her sexual throne oozes with it till it dies. Before the pregnancy, my husband and I used to make love every night.

In the bee colony, life is repeated, over and over. My body metamorphoses, caught in a spasm. Thick, warm liquid runs down my legs. I give birth, I give birth.  A soft, comforting song fills my head, a collective hum. The pollen tickles my nostrils and throat. My eyelashes sometimes catch it and its smell is so pungent that I’m revived as if breathing pure oxygen.

My baby girl’s hair was bees. They buzzed around her head. They were everywhere, hovering around her face, making sunshine, lightly touching her below the almost-formed temple and cheeks, kissing her with their busy legs, making honey from her skin. They never stung her, no. They never hurt her and she welcomed them, the way I do, especially at night, when they enter my thoughts and swarm.