Afterward, when the electricity goes out —
we will burn a citrine fire, the orchard’s cut

oranges fill with softening wax. The bees
are also dying. I’ve made enough delicate

compartments and hymns in my mouth
for honeycombs. Here, I save each winter,

my slowed queen like a nucleus. You ask how
I’ve made my mouth this sweet. I will teach you

to be an apiarist. To be gentle beyond
my tongue and cradle these cells. Crystalline

panes of wings. To put on silken armor,
a veil, and attend to a hive hidden beyond my lips:

wild housekeeping. I once believed in power
phantoms pulsing through walls. Something to turn

simply off and on. Now, I know power as lattices
underground and above, lines of one element turned

to another by men like you, tattooed and agile,
in yellow vests. The bees keep warm in winter,

swarms of their electric bodies. Bathing lithe
fingers into me for a richness, so unspoiling.

Ecology teaches we must be both pollinators
and sextons to carry the living into another life.

I place myself in your power—a sweetness so unbearable.

Jai Hamid Bashir

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