The nectar knew what it was doing.
It was conspiring intimacy between two unequals.
The unmatched saga of honey bee and the flower then begins.
Don’t tell me that the tulip bloomed in innocence-
She didn’t know what her blossom invited.
Rose petals do not unfold unaware
without the traces of hunger tucked beneath their fair laces.
They embrace the braced thorns imbued with fragrance.
Fragrance that can make a drunkard more drunken.
Fresh bloomed flowers tilted their delicate stem toward the sun,
But, waited for a warmer grip of heat,warmer than the scorching heat of sun rays.
They were waiting for a trembling wing,
A body that slowly hums with exclusive clarity and claims.
The honey bee did not enter the valley of tulip roses as a villain….
No,
He was summoned in fragrance,
Invited by a naive sweetness that rehearsed its own unfolding,
Undoing its own doing.
The magic that the fragrance hides,
The delicacy, the tenderness that the colorful petals carry,
The cheerful messages that the playful roses convey…
Each notes were taken.
Tulip gold roses were desired for its unfolding.
It’s not an accident.
Each morning,
The flower loosened its veil.
Unfolded its ways,
Bloomed from buds slowly and gradually,
It grew into a shiny butterfly, giggling all the way.
Let its scent spill farther than necessary,
Farthest over the distant lands,
Where moths and bees reside,
And, fireflies lightens up their ways.
No, longing here is accidental.
Nothing is accidental.
Desires are not fatal.
And, finally when the bee came to take in the nectar,
Buried itself deep,
Deepest in the dungeons of the tulip,
Accepted what was offered
courageously with the urgency of
survival and revival…..
They both were relieved .
One revived,
Another, received.
None were the slayer,
Nobody dismissed the prayer.
None claimed to be a provider….
Both satisfied each other.
With the devotion of quiet understanding and prayer hymns,
The petals shivered in reverence and fear,
Not from reducing harm alone but from the release of desire.
The desire to be taken in,
To be consumed all over.
The desire to take in,
Holding, grasping in the grip,
The grit!
There was a calling there,
Consent dressed as vulnerability,
When collision emerged as fatality.
But, the evening is a clever editor,
A revisionist.
By the dusk, the flower closed in itself,
Counted its missing petals,
Remembering its lost fragrance,
Vengeful, she accused the bee of stealing her wealth with articulated stealth,
Both, aesthetic and demeaning.
Mesmerizing and devastating.
As if a thief came unintended and unattended,
Unrecognized and invisible,
Who stole the gold.
She lamented to the wind-
Catch him!
The abuser!
I was taken.
Forcefully.
No mercy should be shown to him further.
I was abducted by the robber,
He robbed me of my fragrance,
Of my essence!
See how pale I grew!
Petals scrambled.
Oh, how easily desire rewrites its story into alleged elegy,
Drops itself into accusations.
How the same nectar that begged to be touched
now curdles into blame.
And the honey bee….
Dusty with pollen,
Crimson red in sweat and drunk in the madness,
Bearing proof of a shared moment…..
Flies on, flies in distant land, another forest in search of new nectars and platinum-gold,
This time less accused.
Less fearful.
Less considerate.
More valour.
More cautious.
Unaware it has been framed as the thief
in a story the flower authored
alone.
The flower wanted to be touched, scratched, felt, seen, smelled, nibbled, cuddled, and all.
Yet, it shifted blame on its admirer.
A silent killer.
All the beauty that fades away turns against their lovers.
Desires that attract the bees become repulsive at the dawn.
The accused honey bee was blamed wrongfully in the realm of flowers.
What an error!
Dignity was scripted here by authority of the sole author.
The author of love, desire and seduction.
The nectar of love can’t be repaid.
What’s taken will remain with the bee forever.
And, the petals that were tinted shall grow with a delicate pain,
The pain of gaining pleasure,
And, losing self amidst desire.
©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy
Timestamp: 10.10 am, T-4