Without that initial sting, you would not have known what it felt like to fondle an allergy in the shape of woman/man/human love affair. We fear the bee’s song and yet their music gives us honey and yet their bodies give us sweetener.
Without you, I might not have renamed myself into an open-heart surgery. That evening when you noticed the additional scars, I knew you were less cumulus and more like sheared wind. There is so much hunger wedged inside memory. And the blood marinates every gap. And the solemn way in which bodies shelve themselves against another like alphabetized books of poetry. I will call you Bukowksi, but only if you say it back to me.
Without that huddle of static and forage. Without belly like basket where the honey goes. Without the fear that this will hurt and it will hurt. Without without. There would be no flight of this magic. This golden. This delicious. This love.
Aimee Herman 