sonnet for sam langford #4

while collecting bones & grief’s secrets in the brackish shoals,
you found a bottle buried among the muddy sand & broke the cork’s
salt-crystal seal. the floral flight of honey filled you, broke up
your childhood’s iodine brine. you anointed a hand with
the sweet stuckness & considered the way the light held you—until
your hand’s halo disintegrated as a shadow of bees came
from the sea. they made a hive of your hand. an altar they
collapsed their consciousness onto. a bulb of blooming permissions.
& for a profound moment, the fist was a mind 		but not your mind.
they wove between your outstretched fingers until the honey hummed &
your tendons twitched & flickered from pistil to fist. you felt
the smudge of bloodhoney down your arm before the molten bulge
of their stings. your hand was an absence your body was built around. with
one hand, you prayed for a cure; with one hand, you drowned the bees in salt.

Read more from Issue 22.1.