The Honey-Time Cycle.

I. She Bathed in Plasma at Honey Time

It wasn’t blood,

though it looked like blood.

Plasma—

the clear pink veil

left after the clot.

She said it felt like light

if light could burn

and heal at once.

No one told her to.

She stepped into the basin

as the sun was leaving.

Honey time,

they called it—

that hour between

gold and absence.

She wasn’t trying

to be clean.

She wanted the membrane.

The thin slick between

wound and air.

She wanted the sting.

You could say

it was erotic.

You could say

it was grief.

Both would be true.

Afterward,

she lay in the grass

smelling of metal

and bees.

They came to her.

The insects.

The hungry things.

Drawn by something

sweeter than salt.

She did not flinch.

Not once.

She knew what she was offering.

And what it would cost

to feel real.

II. The Aftertaste Ritual

There’s a reason

we wait.

You must not speak

too soon

after the bath.

You must let it settle—

the sweetness

and the heat.

For hours

she sat still,

tongue pressed

to the roof of her mouth,

holding the taste

like a secret.

It was sharp at first.

Then velvet.

Then nothing.

That’s how it works.

The gods take flavor

before they take flesh.

They want your senses

emptied.

They want the mouth

made sacred

by restraint.

Later she would sing.

Later she would open

her jaw to the wind

and let it comb her

like an animal.

But first—

the quiet.

The awful richness

held in silence.

This is what they don’t teach:

how pleasure must be borne

like a wound

before it becomes

a gift.

III. Her Bees Returned with Teeth

They didn’t sting.

They bit.

That was the first change.

Small, deliberate wounds.

Not defense—

hunger.

She had fed them once

from her own sap.

They remembered.

Their wings buzzed

low in the orchard,

marking her return.

She stood very still

as they climbed

her arms

like nerves in revolt.

No pain—

just the ache

of recognition.

One sank its mouth

into her wrist.

Another, her neck.

Tiny mouths.

So precise.

She said:

Take it,

whatever remains.

I’ve already been emptied

by sweetness.

The trees nodded,

as trees do,

when no one

is watching.

And afterward—

her skin shimmered

with holes

no mirror could see.

Only the wind

found them.

And sang through

what was once

whole.