'I Find The Bee Skin Hanging Behind The Bathroom Door' by Ali McGrane

It slips on easily. My body flows into the shape as though bee DNA lurked there all along. Snug in the legs, and a tickle where the sting is lodged.

Vision zooms and mosaics. My wings open of their own accord, roll and lift like paddling oars. I rise above gigantic objects I barely recognise as my own mess.

Buzz overtakes me. I am buzz incarnate, drawn to the siren call. I zig and zag, crash and slide, fooled again and again by the window’s lure.

Believing the lie at last, I dodge your trapping hands, your simple eyes still blind to my shifting form, and tumble a dusted sunbeam through the opening door. Out into honeyed air.

Patterning bodies fold me in, and the dance is joy and gluttony and sway. Tongue-smell, jaw-taste, wing-breath, flooding. Thighs pollen-thick. Sweetness and urging. Flight.