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Women are like Wild Honey
They start thick—
not the polite kind you stir into tea
not the mild drizzle on breakfast toast
but the kind that runs hot
slow
dangerous
coating your tongue before you grasp
the price of its pleasure.
They start golden—
dripping off the comb
sun pressed into their marrow
too rich, too syrupy—
gumming up the gears of your schemes
too luminous for hands that flinch from light
too wild for walls meant to contain them.
You want squeeze-bottle love.
Clean.
No bees.
No stingers.
No buzz.
But they ferment in kitchens
where no one thanks them—
same way their grandmothers did
spooning fire into each serving
stinging their own tongues
just to stay sharp—
drizzling down your better judgment staining
Sunday shirts
unraveling wedding vows
spilling past boundaries
no one asked them to obey.
They get called—
too much.
too loud.
too open.
too shut—
like they were born to fit into your grip
instead of slipping right through it.
You try to jar them.
Slap on barcodes:
Best before.
Handle with care.
Discount if damaged
for quick sale.
But wild honey won’t kneel—
it contradicts logic
defies preservation
reason
perfumes the air
wrecks your thirst for tradition.
You mistook raw for reckless
Reckless for ruin
Ruin for something to fear.
You laughed when they wept—
like grief was a spectacle
like tenderness was weak
like softness
was a defect to be filtered out.
But by the time you realize
she’s the rarest thing
you ever tasted—
she’s already sweetening
the hands that never swatted her
And now,
we sit here—
jars without lids,
spoons still sticky—
trying to remember
what it meant to taste something
that never begged to be caged.
Maybe—
the glass wasn’t meant to hold her.
Maybe—
it was meant to shatter—
to let something wild
and feral
flood in
and leave you
pleading
for ruin.
—it’s a reckoning,
unapologetic,
untamed,
final.
Copyright ©
Daniel Henry Rodgers
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