Architecture

Best to think of them as one—each
small muscle clinging to the hive front
in a July sun, fanning the body into
breeze. Each impulse traveling the synaptic
gap from comb to stamen and back. Inside,
they flow in erythrocyte waves. Listen.
It is pulse and beat, hush in your ears
when you are thinking of silence.

True silence is a hive starved out. Lift
a frame to the sun: bees bent head-first
in the hexagons, the wax stained with
absent honey. Their abdomens stripe
the light and glow empty, cathedral
glass once almost something beloved.


Ruth Foley lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches English for Wheaton College. Her work appears in numerous web and print journals, including Antiphon, The Bellingham Review, The Louisville Review,  and Nonbinary Review. Her chapbook, Dear Turquoise, is available from dancing girl press. She serves as Managing Editor for Cider Press Review.