Bellweather was an old steel‑and‑sugar town on a looping river bend. Two hills pinched the valley; bridges stitched everything together. Half the riverfront gleamed with redevelopment; the other half was brick bones with prairie coming back through the cracks. Winters bit, summers hummed, and fall was when the place felt most itself. Alive.
The worst thing about the Rust Belt was the ignorance of what it represented. Rust was not failure; rust was perseverance. It could curl and crack and turn the metal red like exposed flesh, and still it stayed. People mistook the red for rot and forgot to ask what had been endured.
The worst thing about the Rust Belt was the ignorance of what it represented. Rust was not failure; rust was perseverance. It could curl and crack and turn the metal red like exposed flesh, and still it stayed. People mistook the red for rot and forgot to ask what had been endured.
Perhaps the second‑worst thing was the isolation. Leaving home for college threw that into relief.
In an art‑history class, the professor brought slides of Wassily Kandinsky, and that was the first time I heard the word synesthesia. Kandinsky associated colors and sounds: yellow was loud, sharp trumpets, high fanfares. Green was a quiet “middle‑position” violin. White, a pregnant silence. Black, a final, hopeless one.
Most of the class looked confused. It made sense to me. And it made me think: did anyone else think Wassily Kandinsky tasted like lemon‑pepper sauce?
If the word synesthesia sounded like gobbledygook to the people in Bellweather, then lexical‑gustatory synesthesia might as well have been another language entirely.
There wasn’t even an official way to diagnose it. Not that my family would’ve tried. They didn’t think anything was different about my grandpa, even though he had color‑coded frames by brood stage, chalk‑marked apiary stones in a personal number‑form map, and absolute rigidity around workflow. He was just “practical” and “stubborn,” apt to meltdown if a single brick or stone was out of place.
And my mother—with migratory nectar maps threaded by color, queen genetics plotted like subway lines, and swarm probabilities predicted from hive‑audio spectrograms—was simply meticulous. Never mind that she’d spiral if a single data point went missing.
Clearly not autism, they said.
And, of course, there couldn’t be any tie between autism and synesthesia.
Nothing peculiar about me either, right? The beekeeper’s daughter who said last season’s sumac honey was Eleanora’s Sun because “that’s what it tasted like.” Totally normal thing to say.
I wasn’t keen on taking the family business, but it didn’t feel like a choice. I had lived with bees and names and flavors my whole life. And Mom always said I’d have no choice. The bees would choose me someday, whether I liked it or not.
Whatever that meant.
Whatever that meant.
For now, I was mostly the delivery girl. One late‑summer afternoon, I rolled a cart of jars down patchwork streets. Typical here: the four seasons of the Quaker State were winter, winter, summer, and roadwork. Through the asphalt’s cracks, the really old roads showed. Mosaics of tiny stones. Today I had a few home deliveries, but mostly I was headed to the café to drop off jars they used and sold there.
The Bellows Yard, an old rail yard, had become a hodgepodge of maker spaces, scrap dealers, and small stores. Porchlight Coffee Company lived there.
Most of the Bellows Yard had been repurposed. Old brick factories stood like hollowed‑out husks from which newer flowers bloomed. Such was the way. Porchlight was no different. They’d even rebuilt crumbling walls with scavenged bricks of a similar age.
I dragged my delivery cart through the door, glass jars tinkling; the bell on the door tinkled back. A smattering of customers looked up with smiles of recognition. Truthfully, I never understood why anyone romanticized going where everybody knew your name.
Behind the counter stood the owner’s son, Beck Peltola. Nice enough guy. I went to school with him. Unfortunately, his name tasted like black licorice and a little like grass.
“Cyd!” he called once he saw me, in the midst of starting another order for a customer I didn’t recognize. “Just a sec—Sir, this’ll take a few minutes.” The customer gave a thumbs‑up and took a seat while I rolled the cart to the counter.
“Hey, Beck, business is boomin’, huh?” I said, pulling up with a little clatter. “Though I don’t know if anything ‘booms’ here. Maybe ‘business vaguely vibrates.’”
Beck threw his head back with a quick laugh. “I sense your sarcasm, Ms. Faraday. Keep it up and no free tea for you.” He checked the other customer’s drink, deemed it safe to keep talking. “Alright, what’ve you got for me? This sounds like a drug deal. Can you tell I’m trying to entertain myself?”
“Yes. Painfully obvious,” I said, lifting the blanket that kept the jars safe and revealing a couple dozen little glass containers, all hand‑labeled. “We’ve got your classic clover and linden. Both went over well before.”
“Perfect.” He called over his shoulder, “Corinne! Help me run these to the back?” His younger sister popped from the stockroom and scooped the jars with ten‑year‑old determination.
“Ahh, child labor,” I said.
“Ahh, child labor,” I said.
“Oh, please, as if you weren’t neck‑deep in bees before you could walk,” Beck said.
“You’ve got a point. Now: tea time. The usual.”
My usual was a simple black tea called the Queen Mary blend. It wasn’t worth paying for, but Beck liked to pretend we were on the barter system. He did, technically, pay for the honey.
“That’s kind of boring, you know,” he said, rummaging through canisters. “You take it home and use some secret honey we never get to sample, right?”
“No, nothing like that,” I lied.
I definitely did. Honeydew honey. A misnomer that had nothing to do with melon. In dry years, when sap‑feeders boom, bees gather the sweet exudate from trees. Malty, like toasted rye.
“We’re almost out of Queen Mary,” Beck called. “I could mix in some Earl Grey? It’s like the Earl tries to hook up with the Queen to move up in rank. Romantic blend.”
“Fine by me.”
A beat. He was still looking at me, a vague frown forming. Had I missed something?
As the tea steeped, Beck finished the other order and, because he fancied himself a proper coffee‑shop owner (or son of one), he wrote names on cups and called them out.
“I’ve got your order ready, Aeron!” he called.
I had already turned to go and stopped mid‑step. Something was off.
I glanced back at Beck, handing the cup to the person I didn’t know. I caught the spelling on the lid. I had somehow known it wouldn’t be “Aaron” or “Erin.”
The person was unassuming by every account: brown hair, brown eyes, average build, walking away with a coffee in hand.
The bell tinkled. I stood rooted.
Aeron.
This name tasted like… nothing.
“You’ve got a point. Now: tea time. The usual.”
My usual was a simple black tea called the Queen Mary blend. It wasn’t worth paying for, but Beck liked to pretend we were on the barter system. He did, technically, pay for the honey.
“That’s kind of boring, you know,” he said, rummaging through canisters. “You take it home and use some secret honey we never get to sample, right?”
“No, nothing like that,” I lied.
I definitely did. Honeydew honey. A misnomer that had nothing to do with melon. In dry years, when sap‑feeders boom, bees gather the sweet exudate from trees. Malty, like toasted rye.
“We’re almost out of Queen Mary,” Beck called. “I could mix in some Earl Grey? It’s like the Earl tries to hook up with the Queen to move up in rank. Romantic blend.”
“Fine by me.”
A beat. He was still looking at me, a vague frown forming. Had I missed something?
As the tea steeped, Beck finished the other order and, because he fancied himself a proper coffee‑shop owner (or son of one), he wrote names on cups and called them out.
“I’ve got your order ready, Aeron!” he called.
I had already turned to go and stopped mid‑step. Something was off.
I glanced back at Beck, handing the cup to the person I didn’t know. I caught the spelling on the lid. I had somehow known it wouldn’t be “Aaron” or “Erin.”
The person was unassuming by every account: brown hair, brown eyes, average build, walking away with a coffee in hand.
The bell tinkled. I stood rooted.
Aeron.
This name tasted like… nothing.
The Faraday family had been beekeepers for exactly... three generations.
Yes, you were probably expecting more. But no, my grandpa started it. The story of how shifted over the years, so no one knew for sure. It would be funny if it had started a long time ago; his inability to keep the story straight was, instead, concerning rather than charming.
It hadn’t bothered me when I was young, sitting in bed, rapt for the stories he could weave. One version: he got lost in a swarm as a boy, stung to the point of anaphylactic shock, then led by the bees to a river where he washed the venom from his skin and recovered. Another: a long winter when the family thought they’d go hungry until they found one lone jar of honey at the back of a closet that somehow sustained them. Another still: a queen bee crawled to his ear while he slept and told him her secrets.
I would interject. Add things. Maybe he met a friend at the river (a princess in disguise, obviously). Or maybe the long winter was only imagined: just a really cold afternoon. I cannot begin to recall every single secret the queen had, the ones I crafted for him.
“But is that the truth?” I asked one night. I was a child, and the truth was paramount, given how alluring and prosperous a lie could be.
It hadn’t bothered me when I was young, sitting in bed, rapt for the stories he could weave. One version: he got lost in a swarm as a boy, stung to the point of anaphylactic shock, then led by the bees to a river where he washed the venom from his skin and recovered. Another: a long winter when the family thought they’d go hungry until they found one lone jar of honey at the back of a closet that somehow sustained them. Another still: a queen bee crawled to his ear while he slept and told him her secrets.
I would interject. Add things. Maybe he met a friend at the river (a princess in disguise, obviously). Or maybe the long winter was only imagined: just a really cold afternoon. I cannot begin to recall every single secret the queen had, the ones I crafted for him.
“But is that the truth?” I asked one night. I was a child, and the truth was paramount, given how alluring and prosperous a lie could be.
“Truth is superfluous,” he replied.
I giggled. I didn’t know what that word meant. It just tasted funny.
“Okay, then... what’s your actual name?”
“You don’t think ‘Pop‑pop’ is my actual name?” he snorted.
“No. Mom doesn’t call you that. She calls you Dad. Are you saying you have more names?” I narrowed my eyes, gathering my eight‑year‑old scowl, the only thing capable of cowing a doting grandfather.
“Maybe I do,” he whispered, as if revealing state secrets.
I gasped, giggled again. He relented.
“My name is… Archibald,” he said, still as if it were a secret.
I sat straighter, mulling it over. “It’s like… caramel. And cinnamon,” I said. “But also a little… bitter?”
“You don’t say?” he murmured, rubbing his chin. He didn’t ask what I meant. Maybe he knew and didn’t need to.
After he died, while I was a senior in high school, I learned his name was actually Barret. Barret Faraday. Which tasted entirely different: like uncooked oats and raw flour and far, far more bitter than Archibald. I wished I could have left the truth alone. He was right all along.
I asked Mom where in the world Archibald came from. She said the bees told him.
After that, it was just Mom and me. Mom’s name was Mavis—shoofly pie: heavy on the molasses, light on the streusel.
I asked Mom where in the world Archibald came from. She said the bees told him.
After that, it was just Mom and me. Mom’s name was Mavis—shoofly pie: heavy on the molasses, light on the streusel.
“So, anyway, the name tasted like nothing,” I said later, recounting the upsetting occurrence. “That’s never happened to me. Names always taste like something. This didn’t.”
“What didn’t taste like what?” Mom called from the yard. “What are you doing?”
I gestured at the bee box in front of me. “What does it look like? I’m telling them.”
I stood at the side of the box, not in the runway, palms on the warm pine lid. The hive’s hum held a steady middle note, like a choir holding its breath. A few foragers floated home with fat pollen saddlebags.
“I always tell you,” I murmured, tap‑tap‑tapping the lid with a bare finger. “You’re cheaper than therapy.”
The pitch shifted a fraction, a half‑step brighter. At the entrance, a row of workers lifted their abdomens and began to fan, wings a blur that wrote pale rectangles in the air. A guard nosed my finger and thunked it with her head—an admonishing knock, not a sting—and the hive’s note roughened, then settled. Then the all‑too‑familiar smell, like banana candy.
Instinctively, I backed away, hands raised, saying, “Alright, alright, you’re not in the mood.” I turned and bumped into my mother, who was nearby with an armful of twigs for kindling.
“What didn’t taste like what?” she repeated, brow raised.
“What didn’t taste like what?” she repeated, brow raised.
“A name,” I said. “There was a stranger at Porchlight. Their name is Aeron, and it tasted like nothing. That’s never happened.”
She dumped the sticks into the bin. “Are you sure? Haven’t you said your own name doesn’t taste like anything?”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” I said, an indignant trill at the end. “It’s like… you can’t tickle yourself, you know?”
“You spend a lot of time trying to tickle yourself?”
“Mom…”
It was true, though. Not the self‑tickling. My name didn’t taste like anything to me. That’s how I learned other people didn’t taste names: schoolyard conversations where I asked what Cydonia Faraday tasted like, which led, once or twice, to another kid trying to lick me. Clearly not what I meant.
So I can never know. And it will bother me until I die.
And when I die and get inevitably cremated, someone will be fated (or doomed) to breathe me in. Several someones, probably. All they’ll taste is smoke and ash. I’d rather be buried. It feels more purposeful. Maybe the bugs that eat me will whisper what my own name tastes like, because I never could.
But since I wasn’t dead yet, I worried about the stranger with the tasteless name.
“Mom…”
It was true, though. Not the self‑tickling. My name didn’t taste like anything to me. That’s how I learned other people didn’t taste names: schoolyard conversations where I asked what Cydonia Faraday tasted like, which led, once or twice, to another kid trying to lick me. Clearly not what I meant.
So I can never know. And it will bother me until I die.
And when I die and get inevitably cremated, someone will be fated (or doomed) to breathe me in. Several someones, probably. All they’ll taste is smoke and ash. I’d rather be buried. It feels more purposeful. Maybe the bugs that eat me will whisper what my own name tastes like, because I never could.
But since I wasn’t dead yet, I worried about the stranger with the tasteless name.
I went to Porchlight nearly every day, hoping for a glimpse of the stranger. Beck enjoyed the company, I think. Days passed. No one in town had seen them. No one new had moved in. No one had hired from outside. They appeared one day and left.
I started to wonder if I’d been mistaken. Maybe the name had a flavor and I’d simply missed it. I ran an experiment with Mom one night. Elbows on the soft kitchen tablecloth, hands over my eyes, I had her read random names from an old phone book:
Gilroy Mayer—sweet and salty, like a pretzel dipped in whipped cream.
Daniel Stoddard—a really hard, stale saltine.
Sidney Drechsler—earthy, like red‑cedar smoke and crispy pork skin.
All of them made sense. All had tastes. Mom kept notes, mixed names back in to test me, hundreds deep. Always the same.
I couldn’t be mistaken. But I was chasing smoke.
I started to wonder if I’d been mistaken. Maybe the name had a flavor and I’d simply missed it. I ran an experiment with Mom one night. Elbows on the soft kitchen tablecloth, hands over my eyes, I had her read random names from an old phone book:
Gilroy Mayer—sweet and salty, like a pretzel dipped in whipped cream.
Daniel Stoddard—a really hard, stale saltine.
Sidney Drechsler—earthy, like red‑cedar smoke and crispy pork skin.
All of them made sense. All had tastes. Mom kept notes, mixed names back in to test me, hundreds deep. Always the same.
I couldn’t be mistaken. But I was chasing smoke.
Market Underpass wasn’t an official name. On the town’s edge, an old section of Turnpike had been severed and left to crumble, a tall, curved concrete canopy thick enough to almost be a tunnel. We made it a market. Most nights, it came alive: stalls, food, graffiti, buskers, dripping concrete. Busier on weekends. Sometimes I set up. Mom never came. Too many voices at once.
Beck had joked about the honey exchange feeling like a drug deal; this felt more like one. Maybe it was the underpass’s mouth of concrete, or the fact that I only sold the weird stuff here.
“I call it the Invasive Series,” I announced to a small knot of people eyeing three different honeys on my table.
Around me, the market churned. Under the busted ramp, the concrete sweated. Rust freckled the pillars like old blood; rebar peeked through like ribs. A generator coughed and caught; a string of mismatched Christmas lights snapped on—green, amber, a weary blue—and the night arranged itself. Moths thudded at a bug zapper; the zapper answered in blue sparks. The river air carried coal dust that never fully left, plus frying oil, dill, and hot sugar.
The other stalls around me: the Sławomir family ran pierogi by the dozen: potato-cheddar, sauerkraut, a rogue farmer’s cheese (if you know how to ask). Steam turned their hair frizzy; they flung butter like confetti and kept a tip jar that says “BUS FUND” in Sharpie. A guy who used to weld at the mill, Franklyn Wolfe, had a folding table full of things bent from copper wire: robins, a buzzard with a bottlecap eye, a tiny bridge that sags correctly, which is to say, heartbreakingly. He hammered on a horseshoe, and the ring was thin and pretty, like glass tapping glass. A kid I went to school with, Finley, had chicken-of-the-woods fanned out on brown paper, plus a laminated lecture about not dying.
“I call it the Invasive Series,” I announced to a small knot of people eyeing three different honeys on my table.
Around me, the market churned. Under the busted ramp, the concrete sweated. Rust freckled the pillars like old blood; rebar peeked through like ribs. A generator coughed and caught; a string of mismatched Christmas lights snapped on—green, amber, a weary blue—and the night arranged itself. Moths thudded at a bug zapper; the zapper answered in blue sparks. The river air carried coal dust that never fully left, plus frying oil, dill, and hot sugar.
The other stalls around me: the Sławomir family ran pierogi by the dozen: potato-cheddar, sauerkraut, a rogue farmer’s cheese (if you know how to ask). Steam turned their hair frizzy; they flung butter like confetti and kept a tip jar that says “BUS FUND” in Sharpie. A guy who used to weld at the mill, Franklyn Wolfe, had a folding table full of things bent from copper wire: robins, a buzzard with a bottlecap eye, a tiny bridge that sags correctly, which is to say, heartbreakingly. He hammered on a horseshoe, and the ring was thin and pretty, like glass tapping glass. A kid I went to school with, Finley, had chicken-of-the-woods fanned out on brown paper, plus a laminated lecture about not dying.
Next to them were jarred pickled eggs as pink as a highlighter and green beans so crisp you could hear the snap from three stalls away. Food was truly what dragged people down the line, even if they swore they’d just look: vinegar fries in paper boats that went limp in your hand; kielbasa under onions gone translucent with patience; fastnachts, even though Lent was too far away; and deer jerky, of course. The soundtrack was provided by several buskers who were as dissonant as they were harmonious. A bass with a crackling amp buzzing and notes sizzling; a banjo that had no idea it was born north of the Mason-Dixon Line; and an accordion, sounding exactly like what you’d expect, regardless of your feelings about the accordion.
“Get this—lanternflies,” I said, starting the pitch. “We hate them. Kill‑on‑sight. But a few years ago, our swarm lapped up honeydew from a lanternfly bloom, and we got this: thick, dark, smoky, not floral at all. This one,”—I tapped the red jar—“comes from Japanese knotweed. Earthy, malty, super bold. And this?” I lifted the pale jar. “Tree‑of‑heaven blossoms. That tree that smells so weird.”
“The one that smells like fish?” Roy Gerhart asked.
“No, that’s Callery pear—also invasive,” I said. “Tree‑of‑heaven smells like burnt popcorn and peanut butter gone bad. But the honey tastes like fruit cocktail. The canned kind.”
Tasting spoons clinked. I always brought one safe jar, then hoped they’d try the weirder ones.
Beck drifted over, as expected, letting his family run their stall. “Whatever happened to that blue honey?”
Tasting spoons clinked. I always brought one safe jar, then hoped they’d try the weirder ones.
Beck drifted over, as expected, letting his family run their stall. “Whatever happened to that blue honey?”
“Oh, that was when the bees hit waste from an old candy factory,” I said. “Basically food coloring. I wish it tasted like chocolate.”
Beck started another story, and I almost listened. But something else tugged at me. Not sound, not taste. Absence.
“What would you use this for?” a voice asked above me, pointing to the lanternfly jar. For a moment, I didn’t recognize them. I had been so focused on the flavorless name.
Aeron from the coffee shop.
I blinked too long, then scrambled for filler words to preserve the illusion of normalcy. “Oh—uh—yeah—gimme one moment.” I rummaged under the table for notes I didn’t need, heart racing, mind blank.
I surfaced, eye-to-eye with the tasteless name attached to a completely ordinary person. Be normal. I wouldn’t get answers if I treated them like a curse.
“Like a lot of honeydew, it’s a culinary dimmer switch,” I said, slipping into practiced cadence. “It makes everything darker and moodier. Good for glazes, sauces, even baking if you’re not afraid of it. My grandpa liked it in an Old Fashioned. I’d avoid it in delicate teas.”
They smiled, weighing the jar as if weighing ideas.
“Alright, you sold me,” they said. “I’ll take a jar.”
Bag, seal, breathe. “That’s twenty.”
“Card okay?”
Yes. Relief. The missing piece. Maybe Aeron was the breeze and the last name was the flavor riding it. It would make sense. It had to.
Too eager, I snapped the Square into my phone and handed it over.
The card ran. The name popped up.
Aeron Kerr.
Tasted like nothing. Somehow less than nothing.
“I always thought you were being metaphorical,” Beck admitted after I practically hyperventilated when Aeron Kerr walked away. “Like, when you said someone’s name was fizzy or bitter, I figured it was... poetic.”
“No,” I said into my palms at a dim corner table at the Porchlight. Only the backlights glowed. “Trying to explain it is like explaining a color to someone who’s never had vision.”
I’d had Beck look up synesthesia before; it didn’t land. I couldn’t blame him. It’s why I rarely mentioned it. People didn’t question my grandfather. Or my mother.
“So, what does my name taste like?” he asked, inevitably.
“Black licorice and grass.”
“Eww. No wonder it took you forever to warm up to me.”
The following days went by in a blur of doubt. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went through several journals, simply jotting down names, knowing what those names tasted like. Grasping for a pattern. Anything. Anything at all. But it was truly like explaining what a color looked like or what a smell was. These flavors just were. They always have been. Every name had one. Even some words by themselves did. But not this name. Not Aeron Kerr.
“Why?” I whispered. “How many names have I heard? Why does this taste like nothing?”
I crouched by a hive, eye-level with the upper super. The hum was gentle. No alarms. A captive audience. They always were, ever since I was little. No judgment. No need to translate.
“What do you think?” I asked. A few lazy bees hovered. Night made them sluggish.
I set my hands on the wood, feeling the living, grounding buzz. “What does ‘Aeron Kerr’ taste like?” I asked, foolishly expecting an answer.
I crouched by a hive, eye-level with the upper super. The hum was gentle. No alarms. A captive audience. They always were, ever since I was little. No judgment. No need to translate.
“What do you think?” I asked. A few lazy bees hovered. Night made them sluggish.
I set my hands on the wood, feeling the living, grounding buzz. “What does ‘Aeron Kerr’ taste like?” I asked, foolishly expecting an answer.
I turned to leave.
And heard it:
And heard it:
“⌜▴▴∵△︎♒︎⌟.”
I looked back at the hive. “What?”
Again: “⌜▴▴∵△︎♒︎⌟.”
A name I couldn’t pronounce.
And a taste I couldn’t describe.
And a taste I couldn’t describe.
It wasn’t the same as nothing. It was simply beyond expression.
If it was meant to comfort me, it was brief.
The days were filled with stickiness. Thoughts buzzing in my mind. Thought after thought. Too many thoughts. Legs unable to stay still, even while sitting. Fingers constantly curled under my chin. Body constantly curled toward my knees. Buzz buzz.
How to eliminate a thought? It was nearly impossible. It was like a stain. Even if you scrub it away, some remains. You’ll always remember it was there. Forgetting a thought. You have to think of the thought to forget it.
I renamed them. I told myself that their name was not Aeron Kurr. Their name was, instead, Bombadus Boderferus, for it tasted like a sugary soda. But the name was a thought, so it seeped in, making the soda flat. Maybe something simpler, like Buddy, which tasted like orange sorbet. And the indescribable nature of Aeron Kurr made it melt.
I try to go about life. It’s inescapable though. Names were starting to misbehave. I ran into a girl named Angela on the street, and her name started to taste like soap. Andrew Kowalski down the road dropped off some firewood, and his name tasted like chalk. That wasn’t how they normally tasted. I sat in the car with Mom to pick up groceries, and a radio jingle I'd heard my entire life that proclaims the name of Stoltzfus Electric & Solar... and the name Stoltzfus, which had always tasted like a cherry hard candy, started to... lose flavor.
Everything grew less flavorful.
There was a library near the center of town. It was possibly older than the town itself. The interior was all wood and arches like walking into the chest cavity of a massive and learned beast. It smelled like dust and old hair. There were scattered leather seats that all mostly matched; some were clearly replacements. It also offered a strange selection of other services, like lotto tickets, photo printing, and even renting movies... And the last public payphone in town, which had nearly been taken by PennDOT, was somehow uprooted and brought into the lobby, a small mess of wires always leading in from outside. Still operational, somehow. A collection of obsolescence held together by old habits.
I came here because the internet was no help. Why would it be? I was searching for things that shouldn’t exist.
I collected a pile: books, pamphlets, magazines, an unfinished manuscript. I hunted names and flavors, names and bees. Anything.
A story about a widow who “lost her name” one winter and slept in a veil nightly. A group of miners who “changed” names every season. A sermon by a local sect, its name redacted, insisting that to be blank is to be unclaimed. And a quote, buried in a memoir:
It’s always a joy to meet a stranger. At least, that’s what I reckon. A singular person, but a lifetime of stories. But this wasn’t a total stranger. It was almost a friend. Almost.
It’s always a joy to meet a stranger. At least, that’s what I reckon. A singular person, but a lifetime of stories. But this wasn’t a total stranger. It was almost a friend. Almost.
Having spent the week with this man, it was time to bid our farewells. I asked him for a parting quote, something that he thought would encapsulate the week. Something that was truly “him.”
He chuckles, mumbling, “Oh, come off it, I’m not a scholar.”
“Good,” I had said. “If I wanted the words of a scholar, I’d be at a university.”
He chuckles again. And thinks. And thinks. And he seems to come up with something.
“Bees know true names,” he said.
I was going to ask him to explain, but I think better of it. Had I not just waxed poetic about not needing a learned answer?
He watches as I scribble the notes, then stops me gently, saying In needed to correct his name.
“Is it not Barret?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s Archibald. I was wrong.”
I spilled the stack of notes onto the kitchen table for my mother, frantically pointing to highlighted lines and stickied margins. I knew I looked unhinged. I decided to ignore the alarm bell telling me to perform normalcy.
“Why?” I asked, insistent, near tears. “Why?”
“Honey, be specific,” she said. “You haven’t had an outburst like this in ages.”
Fair. I wasn’t making sense. It wasn’t meant to. I slumped into a chair and sobbed, covering my head, letting frustration ripple out. Mom’s warm hand smoothed my back, trying to iron out my life.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said into my arms. “Nothing makes sense.”
“It rarely does,” she said.
“Why did you give me my name?” I asked, peeking one eye.
“I didn’t. The bees did.”
My body went rigid. Sadness boiled to anger.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Mom, what does that even mean?!”
“Hey,” she snapped. “Don’t curse at me.”
“You and Pop‑pop loved to spout vague poetry and expected me to turn out normal,” I said, standing, pacing, wanting to tear my hair out.
“How was any of it vague?” She asked.
I turned to answer and stopped. A tickle. A buzz. A bee, crawling on my throat. Despite living with hives, they rarely got inside.
It landed like a misplaced raindrop. Weightless but undeniable. It wandered. Each step was a hooked‑foot pinprick catching on the fine hairs of my skin. Breathing became negotiation. My exhale warmed her, and she answered, wings brushing me with a papery flick. A precise, bright awareness.
Then she stung.
The old hot‑staple feeling: a quick jab, heat blooming. I didn’t flinch anymore. Thumb in, scrape (never pinch) the stinger, the white sac still pulsing like a heartbeat. The spot tightened, rose, shifted from clean pain to nagging itch. A toll for living in their world, with a flicker of guilt for the bee that wouldn’t fly again.
But this was not like the other times.
A flash. A flood. In seconds, I heard every name I’d ever heard. “Aeron Kerr” was a flicker, sudden silence in a storm. “⌜▴▴∵△︎♒︎⌟” was nausea at the edge of a migraine. With them came every flavor every name had ever held, crammed into a single unchewable mouthful.
I crumpled and vomited.
Night air and night darkness spilled through the open front door. The screen was loose, creaking in the wind, slapping shut and never latching. Fluttering like a leaf.
Beck wasn’t the person I expected when I came to. He sat at the kitchen table looking at his phone. A beekeeper’s veil lay there. I stirred, and he turned.
“I was starting to worry,” he said, crouching to help me sit up. “Thought I might have to slap you. Like in the movies.”
I should have asked why he was here, where Mom was, what happened. Instead, I said the only thing my mind could form. “I’m broken.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am. I was doomed to be broken. From the moment my mother named me and insisted the bees told her, when I know it’s because she was high one night and reading a book about Mars. How else do you name a kid Cydonia?”
“Wait—Cydonia is on Mars?” he murmured.
“I’m broken.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re not broken,” he said. “You’re hurt. We all are, and we all hurt others. It starts when we’re born, hurting our mothers by arriving. And our mothers hurt us by forcing us into an existence we didn’t ask for. All we can do is try to minimize it, live with it, embrace it, and trust there will be times it doesn’t hurt.”
I blinked. Beck didn’t usually talk like that. His name was also losing flavor.
He stood, picked up the veil, and lowered it over his head. “Come on. We have to go.”
“For what?”
He didn’t answer. He walked out the open door.
Outside, two lines of people stood in veils. In the dark and cold, their white veils were two rows of teeth in a black mouth. I don’t know what compelled me to walk between them. No one stopped me. No one spoke. We filed in quiet as if to a service, as if quiet itself were a requirement.
At the throat of the throng, someone waited by a hive without a veil. Aeron Kerr.
“We’re glad you finally understand,” they said.
“I don’t understand anything.”
“Yeah. That’s the point.”
“Why doesn’t your name taste like anything?” I asked.
“Why doesn’t your name taste like anything?” they returned, smiling.
“Because I can’t taste my own name,” I said. “Like how you can’t tickle yourself.”
They chuckled. “Right. Because it doesn’t taste like anything.” As if it were the simplest answer. “Do you know why? Same reason as me. It isn’t your real name.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. My grandpa used a fake name, but it still tasted like something.”
“That’s different. Archibald was his name.”
“No. It was Barret.”
“That’s not what the bees said.”
“Oh God—fuck off,” I muttered.
“The bees gave you a name; your mom just couldn’t understand it,” they said. The hive’s hum lifted, and I knew it was agreement. “Even if she’d heard it right, how would she have written ⌜▴▴∵△︎♒︎⌟ on a birth certificate?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
They snorted and gestured to the lines of people. “I doubt we’d be here if I were. The bees chose you. Like you were always told.”
“Yeah. That’s the point.”
“Why doesn’t your name taste like anything?” I asked.
“Why doesn’t your name taste like anything?” they returned, smiling.
“Because I can’t taste my own name,” I said. “Like how you can’t tickle yourself.”
They chuckled. “Right. Because it doesn’t taste like anything.” As if it were the simplest answer. “Do you know why? Same reason as me. It isn’t your real name.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. My grandpa used a fake name, but it still tasted like something.”
“That’s different. Archibald was his name.”
“No. It was Barret.”
“That’s not what the bees said.”
“Oh God—fuck off,” I muttered.
“The bees gave you a name; your mom just couldn’t understand it,” they said. The hive’s hum lifted, and I knew it was agreement. “Even if she’d heard it right, how would she have written ⌜▴▴∵△︎♒︎⌟ on a birth certificate?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
They snorted and gestured to the lines of people. “I doubt we’d be here if I were. The bees chose you. Like you were always told.”
The worst thing about the Rust Belt wasn’t failure. It was neglect. Rust didn’t mean the end; it meant someone stopped checking, stopped caring. It curled and cracked and turned the metal red like exposed flesh and still it stayed. Because no one took it in for care until the damage showed. We called it character in bridges and shame in bodies. We let creaks become cracks. We smiled with missing teeth and called it grit.
And it was still here.
So was I.
And it was still here.
So was I.