I can’t remember the smell of the locked room

but since that night, a sniff of Red Door perfume

and fresh white linen, catches a small held breath

deep in a collective of missing breaths, stuck

together with honeycomb and wax. A small soldier

bee with deep-vein ink fattening its abdomen, scribbles

spirograms in its wake as it dances from unscented

stamen to unscented stamen, leaving no trace of itself

between the petals. I can’t remember my father’s face

but the sight of a dirty, crushed spray of lilac on a hot

bitumen road, consumes my head with bees. I scrape

my fingers along a canvas of wax. Contours of flight

patterns swarm. I sweat in a portrait of stiff honey.