People not protagonists

Give me a bouquet of beets
Take me on tours of abandoned houses
Sheets still on their unmade beds
Now dingy with years of dust


Tell me stories of these people
Not their hasty retreats
But of their lives before
And after
Leave the mystery unsolved
I won't ask questions
Or believe in happily ever after
You and I and they
Being people not protagonists


I think there are bees nesting
Just behind the plaster and lath
Not because I can hear them buzzing
Beneath the sound of your voice
But I can see honey
Dripping like your words
Down the wall