What the Bees Knows

Between the “what ifs”
and “why
me’s?”
lie a few
heavy toads

The kind that roll around and
don’t excuse themselves

Always there
when I don’t want them
so

I am forced to sit
under bridges

And avoid
them until they
are very
very
angry

This bridge—mine!
has told me terrible
secrets (lies)
about what I did
with that axe

Gray matters without fact
only television vomit
knife fed to the mothers

I always eat alone
sometimes twice
or ten times
a day

Fortune has really smiled on me
or grinned
or laughed. I hear
inkblots
of that laugh
little drops that
will never dry

And sometimes
and I mean right
now

That great, clipping
whoosh
through the trees
I never see
until it’s gone

I am never in silence
no matter
how still I
squat

The bees
just come in bulk
from inside my mouth
the padding of my tongue
keeps them
safe

And when the clouds look too sharp
I may scream a little

But
I am safe alone
and with my bees
who love me.

–Virginia Petrucci

 

Virginia Petrucci is a writer and artist in Los Angeles, CA and a former columnist for the LA Post-Examiner. She has been published in Avalon Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Dirty Chai, FlashFiction.net, and Best New Writing 2014 as a runner up for the Gover Prize in flash fiction (among others). She has a piece forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, as well as chapbook through Red Flag Poetry (Nov. 2017).