The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

My papa listened to her but didn’t do as she asked, because he knew she was talking for talking’s sake, as a mother does when she doesn’t want to accept that her children have grown up and she feels obliged to continue fussing over them and organizing their lives. To decide for them.

“And that’s what they all carried on doing. What we all carried on doing, too: planting near enough the same thing in near enough the same way it has always been done. And look where we are now: about to lose everything. But him . . . well, he’s old now, but the trees he planted perhaps thirty years ago are still there, and they’ll still be there when he dies.”

I wasn’t born prematurely—I was born on the day when I was meant to be born—which

There’re fights that are worth fighting.”

the future was no longer connected to the past.

We would leave in order to forget the bad things: the absences and the abandonments. We would go to remember just the good things. And in our ignorance, we would heal.

Life got in the way; routine interrupted me; the years caught up with me. And while I no longer had so much time to spend talking about him, or such an eager listener, I never lost Simonopio. And while, at first, the memory of him was more bitter than sweet, as I became an old man, the bitterness gradually faded.

houses die when they’re not fed with their owners’ energy.

he reminded me how important it was to listen. To listen to what life sometimes murmurs into your ear, heart, or gut.

I am what life has made me.

I, me, I, me . . . I never learn. I’m stubborn: I keep doing the same thing. I’m an old man and I keep doing the same thing. I’m back here, and I keep on and keep on.