The Bee Charmer
There’s a woman in town who performs
healing with a net. I pay to watch
the show, front row, metal folding chair
creaking in the spring grass,
half-brown, half-waking.
She sets the scene like a traveling circus—
a communion of strangers searching
for something together at the edge
of the woods—bodies watching
body brave contortion, brave
the sting.
She stands alone in the center of us, near
the bees. We sit silently and watch
as she laces honey-lacquered twine
around her face, her head. Then
she opens the hive to let the bees swarm
around her most delicate organs.
The sight is beautiful and terrifying
and it’s hard to look away.
But I close my eyes.
I remember that I came here to feel
the bees, not to see them. To be close
to their noise without being
their first target.
I’ve heard that being in the presence
of bees can calm the mind.
I’ve heard that we are attracted to
the things that we fear the most—our body’s
dress rehearsal for disaster.
Sometimes I wish for the worst so that
I don’t have to keep waiting for it.
I imagine drenching myself
in honey. I imagine the bees leaving
my mind and kissing my body
quietly in the grass.
Then contortion, then sting.
Now hum, now
stillness. Now the sound of the grass,
waking.
- The Bee Charmer - April 2, 2025
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
