afraid of the sting, you distance, but i would show you sweet,
no skep here, no bumbling & breaking for your gold-
my kind don’t domesticate, I invite you to balance space & cell,
for I know what flight flowers into & I respect a season,
take your necessary suns to decide, but
know that time is honey & I want to tongue
what sweetness clung to you, what pollen palette
I am no pharoah awash in nectared milk
nor roman love inscribed in aromatic wax
but I would hum with my mouth traipsing sepals, lick fingertips
to harvest this distilled taste, delectable across your unstung lips & savor.
Rae Lamicq is a writer, mother & educator who lives in Oregon. She has been a Youth Services Reference Assistant at both Cedar Mill Community Library & Beaverton City Library. She currently does on-call work at BCL. Her poems for this issue were inspired by a delightful text she read on all things apiary: A Short History of the Honey Bee: Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey by E. Readicker-Henderson. She checked it out from the library.