At the end of the world, you tell me about the bees
Where, in this century, have I truly begun?
I was born afraid. And then a friend.
The friendship I had to learn, through trial
and every salt whisker of water, disappearing.
Loss made me, iron-hot, shaped me.
Without this ember grief, only burnished
light remains. Snowless.
In the great room of many volatile gods
where I keep burning. Hot grass.
Absence of trees. In which a world keeps noxiously turning
for the survival of what? Gives loss its feral name.
Define allegiance. Against the frame.
Who will love me when I am at last
ungovernable? Answers the underground.
When I say I love you,
I mean before the conflagration of gods, their cruelty,
there is a door ablaze. I walk through.
All my life. Unceremonious, the morbid temperature
of a year. And then another. In the land of despite, despite.
Let us fortify our rage. Incandescent.
Beneath the countenance of despair,
you hold my face, holding me.
You have kept me. So, I am alive.
So you know how it ends.
To hear the wedding of the bees.
Copyright © 2026 by Muriel Leung. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 2, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“What does it mean to truly be brave? Beyond our stated political allegiances, the poem asks us to seriously consider what we are willing to lose—confronting our selfishness, our sense of competition—to become the best versions of ourselves that can combat the many changing faces of perpetual and systemic harms. We must face our own ugliness to redefine what is just in an unjust world. If this is what it means to be brave, then I want to be braver. I want to do the work that will earn me the right to witness ‘the wedding of the bees.’”
—Muriel Leung
Muriel Leung
