Early April, snow rots gray
along the garden beds.
Tender shoots snap beneath my boots.
I walk to the hives
to ask who survived,
to listen for humming.
Grandmother said the aamoo
carry the world in yellow dust,
small keepers of the return.
I press my ear to the cold wood.
Nothing.
Inside, between the frames,
the colony has pulled itself inward
into a blackened star,
bodies bent toward the queen,
their omphalos,
their fire-center,
their last small goddess.
There were not enough of them.
They starved beside honey,
froze beside pollen.
They died vibrating
with life still inside them.
Like the horses at Pompeii,
preserved in harness and cart,
almost alive, still pulling the world
through ash.
Even dead, the aamoo point inward
toward the queen,
toward the center
that could not hold.
I lift the frame
and the loss widens.
All empty.
All still.
I think of women
who pressed a wet finger
to the wind,
who knew a room had gone hungry
before anyone spoke,
who stopped talking
when the singing stopped.
The grief grows too large
for my body.
I struggle to pull myself back
to this one hive,
this ruined frame,
and the work my hands can still do.