The Safety of the Hive

You've left a dent in my despair.

I'm waist deep in a pool of belonging,
a consequence familiar only to the bees. 

When you said you wanted two,
                                                    not one,
I said, Why not three?
                                   Or ten, or twenty?

But I had multitudes of my own.

                    Those days,
payphones beckoned like an oracle.         
               I could dial Orpheus and hear
the song of the day. But now I couldn't
find one to save my life.

I spent Christmas in that chocolate hotel.
          The phantom of comfort
                                        fit like a pajama.

Did you
too      lie sleepless in December,

wondering if the bees survived, trying
to envision       a world      without honey?

What did save me was
                                                  telepathy,

the feathered fly hooked through my lip,
you used        my queen         to reel me in

every time I tried to run.