I’ve seen them try, they sit cowardly turning blue while the fabric seeps into their skin. They are pitiful. They wallow quietly for months concerned with only their pain, too focused to live. They have forgotten, their minds have become applesauce that their bodies devour from idleness. I don’t know what to do! The weight is unbearable, I feel like I’m drowning. Remember! Long ago we bargained off our right to mourn, we talk and talk and talk and talk about progress or what it means to be civilized, while at the same time demanding so little of ourselves that we’ve gone into atrophy. We’ve forgotten how to grieve.

There was a woman, I don’t know her name, it wasn’t worth learning. She lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. I read about it in the obituary, I looked up the address and took a stroll on over, I needed to see that someone remembered. She hid her face, ashamed that her loss would cause a public outburst. How long had she cradled her daughter for, 12 months, 18 months, two years, or had she ever stopped? Her freckles mapped out like stars across her face, each one in the midst of a solar flare. The black dress held loosely around her shoulders and waist though her make up was applied with a delicate touch that made her look, other than the freckles, like a natural beauty. Now she is like a dog trying to see color.

The bees all left for no one knows why, but millions of dollars were lost, causing us for the first time to wonder what was happening and why we couldn’t control it. I like the way hyenas laugh, without reason or remorse. We should teach kids to laugh like that, buy them hyenas instead of dogs, hyenas instead of cats, clowns instead of teachers. In retrospect, I think all the bees went to Africa where they weren’t being pumped full of glucose syrup and preservatives. They became farmers, tilling red soil till it sifted cleanly through their fast beating wings. Praise God for rain! They buzz in unison, from miles around you’d swear a train was stuck in New York traffic. Ominous, starts low with just a few, maybe even a cricket Crick-Eting, and then its like a wave pool, buzzes coming in slow rising flashes, then they synchronize BUZZ BUZZ! [Expletive] BUZZ BUZZ!

Must have been in the 60’s or 70’s that candles became so popular, I think I know why, but I’ve been labeled a conservative and I like to keep opinions to myself. Before then they were used for very few things, light (quite awhile before that, unless you lived on the set of Little House on the Prairie, though you too may have gone blind), churches, birthdays. Those are my favorites, though they are not in any particular order (Little House would still be first). We’ve taken them over, given them into a part of everyday decoration. People used to seek solace in the little flame they held and now its just a regular part of monotony.

The woman began to quietly cough, trying to play off her sadness as the cold. She couldn’t see the color, she could only tell it smelled wrong; death that is. Maybe if the bees were still around she’d still have a bit of the mystery, she’d need to know why the candle doesn’t all melt at once, how the flame seems to hold everything in it’s grasp. Now she only wonders how long it will take to regain her normal life, her normal life she hasn’t had in the 16 years of her marriage. What everyone else has figured out is that it hurts less over time, you get used to it, like having your feet bundled to stay small. She’s chopped off her legs and now has nowhere left to go.

She’s forgotten how to grieve though her body no longer knows how to relearn it. She is like the rest of them, only caring about the scent the candle brings and the honey they eat instead of the impending noise. It all just continues to run together, meeting at a focal point/an intersection, where the lights green but no ones moving. BUZZ BUZZ! [Expletive] BUZZ BUZZ!