Before The Bees Died

For years and years children rode bicycles
on subdivision roads, past houses while
mothers had book clubs, fathers played in soccer leagues,
and teenage brothers smoked pot in the basement.

We kept up with old friends,
split checks in restaurants,
and threw dinner parties where
we drank wine and ate pesto.

For years we went to therapists.
We went to grad school.
We drove fuel efficient cars
and watched Netflix on the weekends.

Dogs ran around in our backyards.
There were squirrels and birds and trees.

We had dishwashers, washing machines,
sprinklers. We had portable devices- handheld
electronic satellite catchers that gave us
music, that talked to us, that told us where to go
when we were lost.

We immunized our children,
made them eat farmer’s market vegetables and
assumed they would live better, stronger, longer,
that they too would go to therapists
and grad school.

In the summer mothers drank iced non fat
double shot lattes on café sidewalks,
discussed their divorces, their pilates classes
that great new place on 4th street.

In the fall fathers took the kids camping,
put up internet dating ads
and started sleeping with 24-year-olds.

In the spring the sun was hot on our arms,
everywhere new babies were born
and there were flowers.

Season after season. It was perpetual.

If a bee lay dead on a windowsill,
it was scooped up with a paper towel
and thrown into the garbage with the junk mail.
No one even noticed.

shelter

he scooped a place out of the dirt
and with his hands showed me
how warm we'd be there,
just a hole in the ground
with leaves and branches for a roof.
how easy it can all be.

we agreed on kitchen colors,
the benefits of chiropractic
and camping in the snow.
our affair would not be tragic.

he scooped a place out of the dirt
and even though it was 20 degrees outside
his hands were warm.

We will kill it.

We will kill it. We will.
It takes time. It takes work
to curb the stubborn clinging,
the vining between us.
But we will do it.
We starve it.
We overfeed it.
We deprive it of sun
and give it vinegar instead of water.
It takes work. It takes time
but we’re getting there.

Remember when we took pictures of it,
when it was so precious it made us
sick to our stomachs,
like popping uppers.
Hours and hours on the phone,
we gave it a name,
gave it all our breath.

But now we’re killing it.
It's a process, a battle
but we're winning.
Months and months of trying
have made it weak, spindly,
just one stalk stretching towards the sun.
It takes time. It takes work.
We're both tired
but don’t give up.
We’re almost there.