Apiary Moonrise
The apiary moon rose early in the year. Through the late night, the early morning, germinated seeds, first shoots, crackle up from the soil . In this field on a corner every kind of wildflower blossoms for a season of weeks, then turns to dust, buried under goldenrod by the end of summer. Another season is already started, lilac and wisteria open full of nectar, a low flame of purple taking light across the meadow. My skin and the grass are moist and growing slick. I shiver in the dew and watch.
I vomit yolk onto my jeans my shirt my face.
Shelves drip and squirm in the hive. Eggs uncurl to white larvae stretch to yellow drones, their wetwings grow; their spiracles are edged with royal-jelly, but their note is starting to rise.
That long-toned sound, that deep color; the madness of drones, the madness of the flower. A green-sweetened odor asks for leg and wing to scrape it emptypollened.
My head swarms with song, sung in dream-words that soften or take new shape the closer you listen, but still, a nuptial song, a song of assent in the key of that long note.
My blossoming hands are yellow and heavy. I hold them up: they break away petal by petal on the right wind.
My skin is starting to break; green heads that whiten fast. This is the year he’ll come for me. Every sapling growing toward their speechless
Is it dew or night sweat
heads buzz until they give in and vomit. We hear him coming from the lake to the river; an insect chorus over the drone, speaking of necessity, the beauty of life massing itself, land reclaiming land, only never why.
On the meadow where worms aerate dead wood in the soil, where grubs and cicadas have dug holes where their shells grow rigid and colored, he will stand facing me. He'll wear a suit of white linen. I will stand facing him in white, in sheer white.
He will raise honeycomb to my lips. I will take it and feed him honey from my fingers.
With both hands around a bowl, we’ll drink hyacinth wine, our radiate crowns glowing–the metal suns that set behind our heads.
He was born to this; he can part the night to come to me. He can find me when I'm still. When rigid with fear. He will brush my white leaves away, and my green leaves, he will brush away white gossamer. I am still pliant green inside; his big body will spread across me, this moth that chews to penetrate my skin. Under his weight I'm almost breathless. He will feed away my core for a lump of eggs. My insides empty, their striations walked by spiky caterpillars, mint-white, that chew their lines in more deeply.
These strange, ugly children fatten inside me, turned on their backs, moving their legs and their mandibles: I feel them swell while they weave their sticky cradles in my belly.
But I will have a shard of porcelain vessel, a white vessel with dregs of red wine. I will cut the sap from my limbs; though still spry, they will drain. Blood will burst.
The hawk-moths will come from my body.
The hawk-moths will come for my body. When they burn my remains my family breaks apart for shelter from broad wings descend, a corkscrew flight to go up in the fire or feed on what's broken away; they will return for the remains in the ash-morning.
All around them eggs break. Ground will birth larvae burrowed there, eaten alive or hunting in the season, through the year of ownership and sapling, pistil and petal and leafy participant, beginning their spark under the wing.
Andrew Aulino (he/him) grew up on the eastern seaboard. He received a B.A. in German.