Laure-Anne Bosselaar




Summer at the Orphanage

		The bee dozes in a lily’s yellow throat.
					July sighs 
	over the convent’s garth, where an old
linden blooms & bees hover 
		low — exhausted by their pollen loads. 

I’m only five, & exhausted too: I know longing’s
			weight in my lungs & legs, 
so I shelter the bee,
		     in its buttery abundance, my shadow 
			a dome over the bloom.
			
At dusk, the chapel bell thorns the air. Swarms 
	    of uniforms flock toward that bronze authority.  
     
I’m alone. The courtyard is empty 
				& large as absence suddenly — 
	silent as my mother, 
	dark as her back & black car 
	when she drove away, 
	flicking her ashes out the window.

Light dims. I fear the bee might 
		get caught here in this nunnery, like me — 
	so I stroke its belly from under the bloom’s throat & lazy, slow, 
			cloaked & golden like mother’s jewelry, 
		it’s back again, & dusk oozes from the linden.

	I’d like to tell you something happened then – 
that there was an epiphany, that the bee 
			taught me something. 
		But it didn’t. 
				It didn’t even land 
on my hand or leave its sting in me 
		before it soared — an ashen speck —
                high over the walls — 
				    & was gone.