“Food’s ready!” Ruth calls.

Her hive hums and pours honey into bowls.

Nora is still sending females to sting, especially toward me. She laughs and presses honey to my cheek with her mouth. The older she gets, the more she shares.

Lynn sits between them. Her hive does both.

Evan carries a wasp’s nest. So do I.

“I’m so glad we could all be here,” Lynn says, her honey pooling separately in a smaller bowl.

“Yeah. Almost all of us,” Nora says, and something in her chest darts.

Caleb hasn’t been around in years. Two red-winged blackbirds beat against his ribs somewhere far from here. His voice is beautiful because of it.

“If only he’d come around more to sing,” Ruth says.

My parents, gone now, carried mated pairs—cardinals at the gate, herons standing watch in shallow water. Rare, to hold that much wing inside one body.

I hug my sister June. Two paper wasps circle us, mapping the air.

The beaver dam in June’s chest spills again. Water runs along the floor toward the table legs.

“Ope,” she says, laughing. She kneels to reroute it with her hands.

We pull our chairs in closer.

“Blessed are those whose nests lie empty,” my brother says, eyes closed, hands folded with the rest of ours.

The empty chair holds its shape.

Ruth’s husband’s portrait watches from the wall. His chest had been a rabbit warren, tunnels worn smooth with use.

Aunt Maureen shifts in her seat. Fire ants bristle beneath her skin. A queen somewhere deep inside.

The plates pass. Honey thickens. Something scratches inside someone’s ribs. My brother sits very still.

His wall gives off heat tonight.

Sometimes the nest is a hearth.

We sit with it.

Shea Socrates (they/them) is a teacher and emerging writer. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Passages North, Stanchion, Dishsoap Quarterly, The Bulb Region, Major 7th Magazine, Porcupine Literary, and JAKE. They live in Detroit with their partner Felicia and three pets, Vashti, Coney, and Vern.