HoneyBee's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

HoneyBee read the poem in the morning paper. Someone else had written about Aristaeus. The poem was short, pretty, and praised for its fresh take on an obscure myth. He set the paper down and stared at his own manuscript. Three years of work sat in those pages. Now someone had beaten him to it. He walked to the greenhouse at the edge of the garden. The iron-and-glass structure glowed faintly in the twilight, covered in dew that never quite dried. Inside, plants grew that shouldn't exist together—desert flowers beside marsh grasses, vines that climbed in impossible spirals. He pressed his palm against the cool glass. The other poet had written about loss and bees and starting over. But the poem had been neat. Ten stanzas with clean rhymes. It treated Aristaeus like a curiosity, not a blueprint for survival. HoneyBee's manuscript wasn't neat. It started in the middle of grief and asked readers to sit there until they understood why. He picked up his pen that night and kept writing. The other poem didn't matter. His readers weren't looking for pretty. They were looking for a way through.