KIM FAHNER

When the bees fly out of your mouth

When that happens, when the words fly
like a swarm of bees from your mouth,
I will bobble my head as if there is water
burbling somewhere in my inner ear—
aquariumed up and packed full of tiny jellyfish 
that sting, or sharks that circle, closing in.

Stand on one foot, shake the other leg floppy in mid-air;
watch pathetic fallacy try to get out of the pool by 
finding the shallow end after having been out too far, 
over her head. But she will stumble and fall, 
so unable to get up. Woman down.

Later, much later, I’ll still remember it, 
recall the bees throwing themselves suicidal
out of your mouth and onto my living room floor, 
so that their wings were crushed in the chaos, 
so that mismatched dragonflies in the garden peered
in through the front window and then rolled their bug eyes 
back in their insect heads and turned away quickly, 
as if to avoid the high drama, the gaslighter a conductor 
of an orchestra without a proper string section.