coming to terms

The first summer:

I felt bad for the bees that got squished under the
edges of the boxes and went through the
extractor; that came through the tanks floating to
the top of the barrels. I saw massacre in the bottom of the
capper, layers of wax and wings.

I scraped frames of drone bitterly, pacifying my
uneasy conscience by turning down Grandma's
offer of a scoop of honey in my tea on the
weekends.

Last summer:

I continued to spare as many tiny lives as I could
but discovered that I set boxes down on angry
little bees without a twinge of remorse, perhaps
in revenge for stinging me when I was just
standing off to the side with my energy levels
purposefully neutral.

When Brendan complained about how many
times he got stung, I reminded him, while
unflinchingly scratching away at young drones
about to hatch, that we were the thieves and
bastards.

(I still didn't put honey in my tea, but I certainly
wouldn't have felt bad about it.)