maría bascuñán
bees
The bell rings and Lisa glances up at the building’s walls, the tree shadowing the concrete, the clusters of girls surrounding her, as if looking for a sign that assures her that morning tea hasn’t finished just yet. Movement echoes everywhere: the woolen kilts ruffling against each other, sweaty feet squelching inside brown leather shoes that don’t belong in this century.
Why do you always have to be so slow? asks Olivia, who’s already standing, her blue bag hanging from one shoulder, filled way over its capacity. Lisa squints, partly because of the way-too-bright sun and the pollen. Fucking hay fever, she mutters, rubbing one eye as she gets up sleepily from the ground.
The two friends take their places beside each other as they join the crowd, a swarm of girls waiting to enter the hive through a ridiculously small door. In her mind it makes sense, they all look the same: buns, high ponytails, low ponytails, pixie cuts, bobs… does it make a difference if they’re all stuffed inside the same winter uniform, their bags brushing against each other’s shoulders as they go in through the same door? They might as well be worker bees. But then, who’s the queen?
Above, clouds diffuse in and out of each other, creating a pattern that no one cares to see and Lisa tells Olivia what she was thinking of and Olivia miraculously hears her above the buzzing of the crowd and she says, I don’t know shit about science, but that metaphor’s fucking bad. They laugh. Then, into the hive.
María Bascuñán lives and writes in Christchurch, although her roots are back in a long and narrow country otherwise known as Chile. Her writing has been featured in Postscript, the University of Canterbury’s Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities’ Poetry Competition and the Young Poet’s Network. Whenever she’s not busy pretending to do school work or doodling, she waters her plants.