What We Leave Behind

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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lyrics

What We Leave Behind

108 red stitches lined the baseball
my brother flung at the wooden hive.
The whack.
The whirling buzz.
The bees swarmed forth.

I stood in the field, not far away,
four years old and oblivious.
The heat rose from the soil.
A breeze broke.
It felt so good
I closed my eyes.

My brothers flew away,
so the bees found me.
Each golden-gave itself completely
before falling like forsythia blossoms
by my Buster Browns.

My mother tweezed each stinger out,
lined them upon a mirrored tray.
As she counted, every number,
an exclamation. Every hurt,
a little prayer.

Still, when I found bees in the cattle trough,
desperate yellow bodies bombinating that dark water,
I scooped them out by hand, tilted their soft fuzz
onto a board. The rare bee clung to bury
the lancet of its stinger
in the plump of my palm.

Imagine if our kisses were finite.
Would you covet each one as the magnolia
clings to its withered blossom,
or give them recklessly as the honeybee
until nothing remains but the memory of sugar
and the soft sting of goodbye?

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022

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about

Matt Layne Birmingham, Alabama

Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks since he was knee-high to a peanut peg.
I reckon you oughta check him out.