Today I will be reading you a very tiny excerpt from the book, The Secret Life of Bees.
It is a book that I found in my first year of high school and absolutely fell in love
with because it was just so beautifully written.
I usually get kind of nervous reading things, and I don't know why that is.
So I'll do my best to try and kind of make it immersive, but there's probably a chance
I'm going to fucking speed read through it, and I'm really sorry in advance.
But I will do my best.
At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks
of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched
zzzz that hummed along my skin.
I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build
in my chest.
The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of
the wind, split my heart down its seam.
During the day I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom, sounding like a radio
tuned to static in the next room, and I imagined them in there, turning the walls into honeycombs,
with honey seeping out for me to taste.
The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen, and my life went spinning
off into a whole new orbit.
And I mean WHOLE new orbit.
Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me.
I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting
events in motion.
I could have never guessed.
I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe
she wouldn't mind.
I will get to that.
Right now it's enough to say that, despite everything that happened that summer, I remain
tender towards the bees.
I might try to read the whole chapter one when I get time, but that's all the time
I have.
I'm so sorry, but I hope you enjoyed it.
So thank you for requesting that, that was a lot of fun.
