Timothy Green

Thanksgiving Was Over

Early Winter 1991

so she baked Christmas cookies while he trapped
    the last bee in a jar. At the kitchen window

it barely buzzed, half-hibernating, his hand unstung
    forever always, he assured, the bee

dreaming itself somewhere else—the heart
    of a hive, perhaps, at the height of summer’s heat.

And so he let it go like a wish in the woods.
    And so she let it go like a drop of honey.

Milk poured slow-motion in a glass behind them,
    too thick to be real. And the gingerbread men

wore their charred feet, doughy scars;
    they smiled through mouths of molasses.

And so they ate each other there, crumb by crumb,
    until they weighed too much to carry.

First published in DINER (Spring/Summer 2005).

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