plastic raze i stopped looking at the back of my box of cereal years ago. so i wasn't expecting to see anything but a thin strip of cardboard when i ran out of cheerios. hidden beneath the last few dozen pulverized oats was a plastic bumblebee wrapped in thinner plastic. now he sits on a bookshelf between frankie the jack russell terrier and crabby the blue-eyed crab. his name is buzz. he's the first bee i've met who wears tennis shoes. his body is a fraction of the size of his cherubic face. his wings are a secret he keeps bolted to his back. he's the third member of the cereal squad. his nickname is "honey hero". his favourite saying is, "good goes round." his favourite song is "must be the honey". his positivity is contagious, and i'm told his superpower is his honey wand. but i think the real magic is in his eyes. they're boundless and black. he was made in china, but he grew up in minneapolis. like someone i used to know. she told me about the way horses can read people. she sent me a picture of her sister standing in a field, as faceless and haunted as the barn that loomed behind her like a buried threat. she built bodies out of burlap and gave them feminine names. i don't think she lives there anymore. i don't think anyone really lives in any of the places they call home. we all carve our own kingdoms out of ancestry and anarchy, weaving waterways with the minerals that spill from our eyes, and we drift from one tributary to another until our bodies learn to swim against the stream. 220423 what's it to you? who go blather from