The Way the Bees Live

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted. The sun could not reach them here underneath the long limbs of the great oak tree. To what ends, I wondered, did one have to go to be safe from the world? Was it enough that the sun was trying? Some of its warmth struck through gaps between the leaves above. I reached for the flowers amidst the mossy roots. Like the purple petals, my fingers fell and curled. They were dry and cracked, feeling akin to my sandpaper throat. When had I last drank water? I couldn’t remember, but I couldn’t find the will to move from the soft grasses below me. How dead, I felt, like a body decayed centuries ago, waiting for the ground to swallow me whole. The most successful predator in existence, I thought.

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted. The leaves of the oak shook in a breeze I could barely feel anymore. The kiss of cold was more a memory than anything else. The occasional bee droned through the labyrinth of bark, a messenger of the life of the world. Like the wind, I wondered if they wished to carry me onto feet I knew I could no longer use. I refused to look at myself, to learn what had become of this tired old body, to worry about anything ever again. I simply wanted to observe, so I followed their black and gold bodies with only my eyes. I pushed down a pang of jealousy that they were designed to overcome the world, floating on wings thinner than paper. Perhaps in another life, I would have found the resolve to get up. Perhaps I would have borne the shoulders of Atlas as though they were my own.  

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, and I did, too. How strange, a feeling, to melt into myself. My breaths barely rattled my chest anymore. My legs were cramped, splayed in the same position they’d been in for... days? Weeks? I couldn’t remember, but the purple petals were crisp on the edges, and they no longer pointed at the clouded sun. Was that defiance, or death? Perhaps it was giving up. I’m tired of the world, too, I whispered to them. My pale fingers were as curled now as their dark leaves, no longer reaching towards them. I thought I saw one twitch towards the rotting stem. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel much anymore. This body, this world, could no longer hurt me. I was safe here.

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted. I could not remember the last time I had been aware. Somehow, the flowers were still alive, or perhaps they were new. Perhaps spring had returned already. The sun did feel warmer, forcing itself again through the leaves of the oak, but I could not remember the snow that winter brought. Bees still came and went, but I knew they couldn’t save the flowers. They couldn’t save me, either. How tragic, it was, to be unaware of their own tragedy. I couldn’t remember ever feeling envious of them. Would they still have succumbed to their being if they didn’t have wings? Of course, they would have.

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, perhaps still hoping the cruel world would protect them. The grass had grown so tall around me that I could only see the very tips of their blackening petals. How many more seasons had passed me by? How many more would? The sweetened scent of summer reminded me of blueberries. Soil seeped up around me, cool and refreshing. A heavy silence called to me from below. I’d heard once, in a life so distant to me now that it felt like a dream, that drowning was peaceful in one’s last moments. Perhaps these were mine. 

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted. They were the last thing I’d seen, and thus remained imprinted on my consciousness as I sank beneath the surface. I wondered what I had become; a soul? The ground itself? No matter, I thought. Freedom is this. Freedom is darkness and rest. How strange, that I could think. Perhaps I was still observing, too; I sometimes thought I could see the slimy, wriggling bodies of worms in the compact earth around me. They didn’t scare or disgust me. They simply lived, and I admired them for it. These tiny creatures did what I could not. Did they have a choice? Could they decide to disappear from the world, or were they like the bees, driven by being? I didn’t know why I cared. 

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted. I didn’t know why I cared about them, either, but they were often my focus. I liked to imagine them surviving on the surface, that the sun in its entirety found them and livened them into the most brilliant bloom. Maybe the nutrients of my own disappeared body had been enough to keep them going. I clung onto that image of them, hoping that they had broken the cycle of death. I noticed a strange prod into my consciousness that I did not recognize, at first, as feeling. Though I’d been lost to time, I suddenly began to feel it pass me by. 

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, and I despaired that I would never see them again. I missed the warmth of the sun warring with the shade of the oak. How beautiful the picture had looked; how wondrously alive the bees had been. It had been too long since I’d fought to live, too long since I’d truly felt peace. One couldn’t be without the other. I couldn’t rest if I hadn’t worked. I had simply become nothing, and it must have been centuries that I prayed to any god that would listen to grant me return.

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, and I sobbed at the world I had somehow emerged into. I blinked eyes that were mine to blink again, and I lifted lively hands to shield myself from the sudden light, but dropped them once more. This was what I’d prayed for, wasn’t it, to be under the sun again? Who was I to keep it away? I heard bees buzzing through a citrus-scented spring and the wind tangling with the leaves above. I felt the cool moss below and the featherweight atmosphere around me. I breathed, and my legs pulled towards my body, and I could stretch my fingers once more. I resolved to cross the distance this time.

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, and I had never seen anything more beautiful than those purple petals. A plump bee harvesting pollen lifted into the air when I approached. My fingers shook as I touched the petals and felt how soft they were. I choked back another sob; how precious, life was. Perhaps my existence under the ground had been a dream. Perhaps only moments had passed me by since I’d first laid down. Perhaps I truly had been lost to time and regained again so that I could understand what it was to cherish life. I thanked the bees flying around me for working, the worms below my feet for being. 

In the afternoon shade, the flowers wilted, and I spent the rest of my days watering their roots to life.