Dakota Reed

in the dream all the bees were dead

wings wilted      still as morning
my hands      sticky with honey
their little bodies          like lint
  stuck to the carpet    like
confetti            leftover and limp
     from a party
already forgotten

I thought a bad omen
that afternoon I almost cut
my fingertip     off       while
  slicing a green apple into
     thin slivers like    crescent moons
like waxy wings        falling into
            a pile of themselves

I found a butterfly later     on my walk
   into town      let it balance
on my bandage         for a few blocks
     ‘til it flew     from my finger
fluttered
      into the road
floated down
     onto wet ground
and was run over by a black
            car       slick
with rain
            
I thought a bad omen
                       now we all wear surgical
            masks       and wash our hands raw
                        my fingertip is still throbbing
            stinging            from the soap        from the serrated
     blade      opening back up like the slow
            spread of wings            blooming
                         with blood
 
in the dream
all the bees were dead
but I could still hear them
    buzzing

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Dakota Reed is a copyeditor for Atmosphere Press. She received her MFA in poetry from the College of Charleston, where she was a Woodfin Fellow and senior editorial assistant at Crazyhorse. Her work is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, has been published in Blood Orange Review and has been awarded the Poetry Society of South Carolina’s Nancy Walton Pringle Memorial Prize, College of Charleston’s MFA Creative Writing Prize and honorable mention in AWP’s Intro Journals Project.