Two Bees Drowning in Coca-Cola

1. Two Bees...

What were they thinking, doing, whatevering,

that brought them here in the first place?

What sweeter nectar does your soul sing for

when red roses and purple petals

flood your nostrils with the purest perfumes?

His pen glides over faint blue lines, carving smudged cursive into the creased A6 page. His fingertips are stained, rough, and shiny with ink residue. The waxy tang rises to his nostrils like the first curl of smoke to a nicotine dependent.

So he writes.

What then, when those daffodils dance themselves to death,

for knights with gleaming stingers

to siphon sweet melodies

from the dark breast of their Africa?

At times, the ballpoint jams, ripping at the paper’s bruised surface. He blows into the tube, coaxing the ink to life. The pen sneezes, coughs and sputters.

Still he writes on.

Two precarious peas in a pod

reaping reward before God.

Two cards hidden up His sleeves . . .

You generally write what you see, what to hear, what you taste. Like the bitterness of ink because the pen spat on your lips.

You write what you feel, on your melanin; never ever drill deep inside. Like the wind planting goosebumps all over your skin.

You write what you smell: cold cocoa and artificial nectar. Not the quiet desperation hanging on miserable faces. What you can't write about here is what you really think, what you alone can hear apart from what broadcasts from loud megaphones carried on the backs of Trojan horses, the rat you smell, the truth you see, and the warm and fuzzy you feel when you're off-track... but morally right.

What he hears right now is a distant yet omnipresent buzz. One he won't turn his face toward. Else what he thinks is decoded.

Therefore did Deity say:

"Let them perish from consequence,

for actions demand those.

Or must I alter this pair’s negligence

and fracture Newton’s laws?"

2. Drowning...

"What are you writing?"

He looks up and what he sees is an angel on her own terms. Floral dress flapping in the breeze. A book—a real one—pressed between her upper-arm and chest. She wears a smile like a badge of honor and carries tinted locks like a crown on her head. Wide-rimmed glasses cover half of her face. He immediately recognizes her. The front-row girl in half of his classes.

Most importantly perhaps are the things that she doesn't bring. The strong simulated scents following everyone around these days, sweet or spicy. Nails that are the same length as the fingers themselves.

The dull desperation.

Omnipresent on countenances.

"A poem," he says. She's going to ask if it's okay to sit next to him. He's going to start being self-conscious about the strong smell coming from his armpits, the sound of his every breath, the fade and holes in his jeans, the ones which are not deliberate. She's going to keep sitting anyways.

She fulfills his prophecy. "What's it about?"

He steals a glance at her. She looks back at him. He looks away, trying to remember if the toothbrush touched each square millimeter of his front teeth in the morning.

"Two bees," he says.

She smirks. "You’re out here by yourself writing a poem about bees?"

Out here by yourself... Where else could he be and with whom? He looks around. To cast a long gaze at the varsity students dotting the vicinity. Some in groups, laughing. Others staring at devices which connect them to other dimensions. A group of boys run around the campus lawn tossing a football.

All as the eye buzzes and monitors their every move.

"It's more of a, umm, thought experiment than, than a poem," he stutters.

"Aha?" she says. Fishing a lunch tin from her satchel. She opens the box like he isn't there. A potent concoction of tomatoes and avocados scratches his lungs. It's been long since he ate something neither oil, salt nor other hands have touched.

As if on cue she offers him a portion. He shakes his head. He knows he won't like it. And he doesn't want to ruin the little reverence he still holds for the natural by consciously sacrileging it.

"So, what happened... to the bees?" says the girl as she chews soundly. Licking her fingers. And lips. Curious.

"They drowned," he says nonchalantly.

She jerks her head backward. "That sounds like a cruel story... to the bees."

He chuckles. "We don't have to feel sorry for stupid things."

That's a bit much for her. "Calling creatures which are skilled enough to turn nectar to honey stupid doesn't sound like the most unstupid thing to claim."

He stares at her. Remembering how she's the same girl who lifts her hand everytime to offer some of the most naïve takes in class. Like how we should do away with electricity because it's polluting our common habitat.

But if we did that then we'd cut more trees to keep warm.

Well, comes her rebuttal, human ingenuity has always invented solutions for problems. That won't be an exception.

Fine then, because human ingenuity brought electricity out of need.

Such circular logic.

She couldn't possibly understand what he means this piece to mean.

"I found those skilled creatures in a bottle once," he says.

3. In Coca-Cola.

Out of all the bottles the students left outside that day, these winged Wiseman from the East chose one that was left half-full. He doesn't trust folks that can't finish 12 ounces of carbonated beverage, but that's a story for another day. Whoever didn't finish it, left it open too. The bees arrived on scene and landed on the table, drank a few drops from the cap and decided they wanted more. Searched around for a bit. Found the mouth of the bottle. Wiggled in.

"Thought they'd found the end of the rainbow or something," he says.

She's flabbergasted. "And you just watched them... drown?"

He looks around. Students are still gossiping on top of their voices. About the last lecture. About the next lecture. About lectures they've had or are going to have for four years straight.

"What if I wasn't there?"

"But you were there!"

"It's not my fault I was there. It's not my fault they went in there. It's not even my fault someone didn't finish their coke. Not my fault it was invented, bottled, marketed, manufactured until it landed on this very table that fateful day."

"It's still your fault you didn't help."

"Then it's God's fault he created a man who could decide not to help."

"I don't believe in god."

"Then you believe in worse. Because whereas God can be accused of being cruel, nature can only be stupid. For evolving a person who couldn't save it unless he wanted to. You've ever thought of that? Nature worked throughout billions of years to evolve the ultimate creature. And forgot to force her in the same process to preserve it by default."

The Eye buzzes some more.

She's stopped chewing out loud now. She stares at him like he's just blasphemed. And perhaps he has, against her personal goddess.

As for him, he's done here. He's made his point. She'll leave him alone now. As everyone does after he releases one of these... like a loud fart.

Two precarious peas in a pod , he scribbles

reaping reward in front of God.

Two cards up his sleeves . . .

Therefore did Deity say:

"Let them perish from consequence

because actions have those.

Or must I alter this pair's negligence

and infringe upon Newton's laws?"

After all, what were they thinking,

doing, or whatevering?

And now that they're drowning and

fatigued from pointlessly endeavoring

out of ice-cold and artificial nectar,

have they learned any better?

"What happened to the bees?" she says. "Did they... drown?"

He pulls the refill tube from the barrel again. To shake the ink until it comes out smoothly. "It literally says in the title."

"It says they're drowning... doesn't say they drowned or managed out, does it?"

"I don't know what happened to them to be honest."

She chuckles sarcastically. "You don't know what you saw happen right before your eyes?"

"Well, I walked away before I saw their end. So maybe they drowned. Maybe they didn't. Maybe soon after I left, the other bees saw them and called Bee 911. I don't know."

"You don't care at all?"

"I call it Shroddinger's Coca-Cola situation. I choose what I want to believe happened depending on which side of the bed I wake up on a given day. Today, ummm, I woke up feeling like they didn't."

She still wants to ask questions, as if that will change the fate that met the creatures that day. He throws his backpack on his back and tosses the paper in a nearby trashcan. "See you in class. I'm on my second strike."

__

She sits there for a while. Ruminating. Trying to quench her thirst for justice by thinking of the various hands that could have snatched the bees from that of fate. Wind toppling over the bottle? Unlikely. A passerby? Perhaps. How about a lie?... Oh, yes. Maybe the boy is lying. Maybe this story didn't even happen. If it did, maybe he saved them. She leaps up and rushes for the trashcan. She picks the crumpled paper and slides back in the chair... expecting to see a middle-finger drawn in the middle of the page.

The poem is there. Shabbily scribbled, but eligible.

What were they thinking, doing, whatevering,

that brought them here in the first place?

What sweeter nectar does your soul sing for

when red roses and purple petals

flood your nostrils with the purest perfumes?

What then,

when those daffodils dance themselves to death,

for knights with gleaming stingers

to siphon sweet melodies from the dark breast of their Africa?

Two precarious peas in a pod

reaping reward before God.

Two cards hidden up His sleeves . . .

Therefore did Deity say:

"Let them perish from consequence,

for actions demand those.

Or must I alter this pair’s negligence

and fracture Newton’s laws?"

If God topsy-turvies this bottle

will hope mess with us also?

Drunk as we are drunk

from the dark melanin

oozing from Blue Mother’s crust

which replaced horses with horsepower?

If, I, God, topsy-turvies this bottle

who really is to blame

when the bee perishes anyway

or worse, survives,

but survives to sting her helper's skin

or his kin's

before hoping into the artificial nectar

of Pepsi-Cola?

The sirene blows. The students halt whatever they were doing. Whatever discussion was happening halts mid-sentence. They start filing towards their respective classes. Because lateness drops your grades, and the dropping of grades means a dim future, and a dim future... Meanwhile she just sits there, frozen.

So the Eye buzzes.

It stares down at her.

She knows it's sending a signal to the appropriate authority about a girl who's out of place in this world. They don't mold people who don't follow orders promptly on this campus. They throw out round pegs from this square hole.

But she's God now.

Making decisions for herself.

Making choices.

If it means deviating from others then so be it. From today onward, she'll be topsy-turvying coke bottles because bees could be drowning. Even if they point every camera towards her.

A uniformed figure approaches from the distance. She rises... ready to stand her ground.

A sharp blade digs into the back of her neck and spits shards of glass. She slaps at it hard.

The uniformed figure is shouting something as it gets closer.

But she's busy looking at her palm. For right in its centre is the bee she slapped—dead and bloodied.

What was she thinking, doing or whatevering?