The Story Pyxis

Day 13

March 13th, 2009

30-Day Writing Challenge

Picture submitted by:  Mark Adamson

Bees

Siren, I, with flawless stealth,

Watch me gather all my wealth.

From bud to bud I move and dance,

Kissing each, a swift romance.

Yet each affair will help me mold

My liquid reservoir of gold.

Comes the Master, ope’s the door,

And takes away my golden store.

Now that he read the poem he had written, it didn’t seem fair.  Not fair at all.  Poor bees; they probably didn’t have a clue as to why every so often, their honey was harvested and they had to build up a new reservoir of honey.  David looked out the window at the beehives.  They were swarming.  He shrugged.  Most likely, they didn’t even care.  Bees would live from moment to moment, driven by instinct to harvest pollen and make honey.  He flopped down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, pondering life and its bitterness.

Being a poet tended to make him a little melodramatic about things.  He loved thinking of tragedies-- they held incredible emotional force.  There was just something inescapable about a character who has lost a loved one, and especially one that was very close for many years.  The irreversible nature of death made the poignancy sustainable through an entire story.  Characters who fell into depression and sought the irreversible escape of death, themselves, were a favorite to him.

And yet, he knew that he would never wish that upon anyone, not even himself.  His best friend, Kara, had lost her father, and he had marveled to see her attitude of self-adjustment.  Although she had loved her father very much, she pushed on, because she needed to.  She had told him, once, that she had considered suicide, perched at the top of a high building.  Vertigo had made her pull back, and she had realized that her death would only add to the death of her father.  If she died, too, how much more pain would she cause?  Would she cause more deaths?  She had decided that her only true escape lay in life.  He had asked her if it didn’t hurt anymore.  She had gazed at him somberly.  “It always hurts,” she said simply, “But you learn to live with it.”

David rolled over on his side.  Life didn’t seem fair to him, most of the time.  Perhaps that was why he loved tragedy so very much.  It seemed easier to him to embrace it, like Kara had.  He thought about the honeybees that his father kept.  They lived from day to day, not caring about the fairness of life, never dredged down by philosophy or memory.  He so very badly wanted to be a bee.  When something was taken from him, he wanted to move on as if nothing had happened.  He wanted instinct to kick in and make him work, rest, and exist in a state free of complications.  Yet here he was, a young man of fifteen, full of too many thoughts and feelings and experiences.  He stared ahead dully.  “Stupid boy,” he told himself, “You’re too melodramatic.”

A soft knock at the door failed to make him move.  The knob turned and the door creaked open.  “David?” asked a familiar voice.  “Are you in there?”  Kara stepped inside and walked over to him.  Gently, she kneeled beside his bed, near to where he had his head.  She laid one of her hands on his hair and brushed it aside so that she could look at his eyes.  “David?”  He closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to see her.  She had that look of empathy in her eyes, and he didn’t want it.  But he couldn’t shut out her voice.  “David, it’s almost time for the funeral.  I . . .”  She paused for a long time.  “I know it’s hard.”  And then she waited.  He realized that she would wait as long as it took.

He breathed in very deeply, sucking in as much air as he could, and then he released it slowly.  When he had finished, he opened his eyes and looked at her.  She hadn’t moved.  He nodded.  “I’m ready.”

They went out to meet his older brother and, together, they all went to watch David’s mother and father be buried beside each other.