Bee Dress
After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor
For your sixteenth birthday,
you got a dress made from a swarm
of live bees, pulled in at the waist
with a drawstring,
which you were made to wear
on special occasions. If you refused
to put on this carefully chosen gift,
you were told what an evil creature
you were.
So, you wore the dress.
Spoke quietly, moved slowly,
didn’t laugh and didn’t cry
to avoid provoking the bees,
to avoid being stung.
People said how sweet you were
and how demure you looked
in your honey-bronze dress
edged with black needlepoint.
Doryn Herbst, a former water industry scientist in Wales, now living in Germany. Her writing considers the natural world and themes which address social issues. Poetry in: Fenland Poetry Journal, Amsterdam Quarterly, Green Ink Poetry and more. Forthcoming in: Osmosis.