How familiar the sight of you in coveralls:
papery white and gliding between bees safely,
a large moth, veil twittering behind 
a tattered old wing. How familiar
this part of summer: heavy, 
air wringing each breath from our lungs
as we bend over hives that ooze honey
sharp and golden like afternoon’s last rays of sun.
As I pump the smoker, you crack the hive,
pull out frames to inspect. We’re working
our way down to the queen, checking brood,
how many cells turn with life,
and it doesn’t take long to see there aren’t many.
How familiar your voice, how out of place: 
and I am irritated like the workers 
returning with nectar, bright streaks of pollen
to find us poking through their ordered world.

			She was the first queen
I spotted on the comb when I learned to tend hives,
and now you say we should kill and replace her. I understand
she is not useful, can no longer produce
the brood to become the larvae to become the bee.
How many times I’ve opened your shirt at night
or taken down your pants and dreamed
of finding another body, new limbs, someone else
with softer, darker hair—I am never surprised: your thumb,
her long thorax, the wake of workers stroking,
breathing her essence the way I breathe in yours.
I know you will crush her before I can argue.

There have been times I’ve wished you dead
for the new pureness of the grief I’d feel, but
I am overcome with different longing.
The hive will come to know the new, caged queen.
Her scent, alarming at first, will become 
recognized, comforting. How familiar,
your shoulder beneath my hand: the way 
you step away from the hive and out of the white suit.
Even if it would devour us, I would chew
through this cage we keep our love in
to make us new to each other once more.