I don’t deign to be a professional poet, but I like to dabble in verse on occasion to accommodate my muse, who inspires me to venture into the poetic world and stretch beyond my short fiction. This particular poem is noteworthy because it is the very first time in the history of Destiny’s ever that I have written something while someone close to me was in the same room. I am a solitary writer–the closest I get to having company when I write is the person sipping their latte next to me at the coffee shop while I zone out with my earbuds and my MacBook Pro. So for me to tell Sam that I was inspired to write and then to actually sit across the couch from him and hammer out a poem was a remarkable occasion. Granted it took me a long time, something that is belied by the final product, and I basically ignored him for a good two hours while I started three different poems with only one sticking, but it gives me hope that perhaps one day I might actually be able to have that Paul and Julia-type relationship, with he in his own world coding and I in mine creating.

Here’s to stretching. And to consistency. And to the real poets out there who let me trespass on their territory to satisfy my fancies. And so I officially kick off Thursday Verse-Day.

The Rapture of the Honeybees

You took a bat and swung it hard

And the honeybee hive residing in my heart

cracked.

The sweet nectar bleeding into my veins

careens me into a sugar high

of love and euphoria.

The frenzied buzz in my chest grows.

With each breath I teeter

between anaphylaxis and ecstasy.

 

So this is falling, I say.

Your forehead presses to mine,

your fingers trace my palms

like the delicate horsehair

of an artist’s brush on naked canvas.

I sway.

 

Every pulse affirms

the gravity of the the destruction.

The walls have tattered,

their syrupy residue

courses through my body,

a river of happiness to my organelles.

The hum of the freed honeybees echoes the truth:

I have changed.

 

You grip tight and

the honeycomb drips.