The Last Bee Sings

By Christina Stenhoff

Location: Blenheim Avenue, Whalley Range

This poem was a finalist in our Rainy City Love Stories competition

Every morning the grasses weep
and chant your royal name.

Foretold perhaps in the frenzy of
your midday, honey-drunk dance, yet

all afternoon I searched the
entire scorching garden for a trace.

The orchids gave nothing away.
I should have known as much.

I wanted to cry, but my face was hot,
tight, unrelenting, a dumb mask.

I returned to the broodless hive
and it was then that I knew.

We’d watched the whole colony
collapse around our feet.

Then we flew, triple speed, to other hives,
found nothing, no-one.

The cells, empty alveoli of a dead lung.
We remembered our purpose.

I shuddered inside of you
feeling the weight of creation upon us.

Our bodies taught, tessellate.
Your hum, a Vedic hymn; I miss it.

Christina Stenhoff is in the final year of a creative writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University.