Bee's Gift

Bee's Gift

by Clair Anna Rose

"I have something for you," he said, or maybe he didn't say. I remember visually, but dialogue only seems to stick if it's poetic, and this was ordinary conversation.   

He said he had found old bee boxes and that they might make good shadow boxes.  In my mind I envisioned us wandering through the forest on the outskirts of town reaching our hands into the hives of sleeping bees and eating honey off the comb. 

In reality we pulled off to the side of the road as the golden light of a setting sun was cutting long shadows across the grass and pines.  Small bugs glowed against the sun, strands of stray hair illuminated.  There were piles of old boxes, I chose two.  But it was the trays of old, mottled, dried up combs that caught my eye.  

I dove my hands into the wasted combs that still held their shape, even though the honey was long gone.  

Years later, the combs still waiting for me to make something of them, I would paint them golden, and with bee's wax adhere them into place.  The bee's I found at a little place in Springdale, Utah.