Honey Child

By Maya Kompella

The bee’s wing has broken, world’s finest glass
now a shattered mosaic across the sidewalk.
You reach out to touch it and it splinters

under your soft touch. A small life is ending 
right here at our feet. The sun covers everything;
you think nothing should hurt in this world.

I think if I could hold it, a bee
would be the softest thing on this Earth.
We do not speak, but our silence

is not the one that hurts. It softens, expands
into the gaps between your fingers 
where they stretch as you show me 

your fingertip on which the wing 
has crumbled. Where I brush it off,
it clings to me. I wipe your gentle tears 

with honeybee pain. Wing glitters
in the dips below your eyes, stuck
in your tears as they turn to honey.

You unbuckle hurt from the bee and hang it
around us. We grieve a life against each other.
A few steps away, the bee performs its final

horizontal flight against the pale concrete. The sun 
fills all the gaps between the world, 
plugs up my ears and heaves 

against my heavy heart. I wonder
how soft a human heart is, as yours
beats against my arm in time with quiet death. 

Maya Kompella is an undergraduate student and writer from Los Altos, CA, residing for the time in Chicago. Maya mainly writes poetry and short fiction. She serves on the poetry staff of Helicon, an undergraduate-run Literary & Arts Magazine, and has poems published in Block Party Magazine and Lover’s Eye Press.