Aidan Johansen - Fragile, Gentle Honeycomb
I remember it as a glimpse of personal legend,
Preserved in an amicable amber lens in my mind:
Through the living room windows that were rimmed with cobwebs, the morning’s rays striking through,
Slanting to alight upon your concerned face,
That fragile, gentile honeycomb
That crumbled and dripped upon me telling you that I’d had a nightmare - That I’d had a dream that you’d left us;
Carried and wisped away upon wayward winds;
A fate as horrible as we could both conjure up,
We embraced to comfort and melt and seal each other back up together
I’m not religious, but I was sure your loving face to be angelic, and your presence divine, It was all the more heavy when your beeswax wings melted and you were pulled to an earthy fate.
They say that “your heart was too big for this world.” I know that it’s a balm on the stretched wound of loss,
But I can’t bring myself to think that way;
Like your heart was some bulging, meaty mass
Your valves clogged with nectar, arteries overflowing with honey,
Until it as a swarming, pumping, cloyingly oversweet fetid hunk of flesh, burst And then stopped.
I can’t revere your memory that way.
Maybe you were like a bee who to protect its family
Uses its body to suffocate and overheat an intruder;
But for all the strife and grief that you wanted to shield us from
I wouldn’t willingly forfeit you to that grim spritely martyrdom
While I’ve emerged cauterized and stronger from that heat
I wish that we could’ve grimaced and beared the brunt of that wasps’ venom together Instead of seeing your overheated body get carried off by those yellow jackets
Sometimes I still see and remember you, especially in sweet honeyed sleep Sometimes it’s like pollen, makes my eyes swim like a bug’s final death struggle in water, Makes my throat swell and constrict shut tight,
Sometimes it’s like a pleasant flower smell,
And I’m able to blissfully cherish your enveloping lingering after-scent All in all, in your form of pollen upon fallen flowers,
I love you, Mom.