The Swarm

A boy carries a lump of bees in his hands. He lifted them from a white plastic chair.

They spent all night in the yard, clumped together, quiet. Some dead bees drop

near the leg of the chair. The boy steps through them. He watched the bees from inside

a glass door, slid the door back and forth a little before he went out to them.

He’s not afraid. Bees hear with their whole bodies. They whisper a secret language.

He thinks each bee is God’s single syllable—love, he thinks. Life. The bees are light

in the boy’s hands because they are lifting already, because they are gone.

He thinks scout bees found a new home, and all the rest are going there. He sweeps

dead bees into a trash bag and sits in the sun in the white chair. He believes he walked through

a hidden door, bowed down to get through, addled, frightened, but saved by vibrating bees.

Barbara Daniels