Isabel gave me the first dead bee. It was on her townhouse deck in a paper Dixie bowl, and she thought I'd want it, which I did.

I kept it in the bowl underneath my car radio. I went to the gas station on a summer day with little money, enough to get home, and I had to pay in small change of dimes and pennies. I used the bowl to collect the money and balanced the insect on the passenger's seat. It fell to the black hole floor when I nudged it, trying to lean out of the window to empty the change into the attendant's hand.

The replacement bee was found on the seat of a wicker chair outside of Friendly Grounds, the town's only coffee shop that closed last year. The bee's delicate, rigamortis-clamped limbs were wrapped around a tiny stem and flower blossom. I put it in another bowl and placed it on my white dresser.

When I left Baltimore for Christmas in New Jersey I asked my mother where my bee had gone, but before she answered I already knew she had thrown it out with other relics held in my old room. I haven't slept there for years.

Today I was walking past the deli and saved a bee carcass from surrounding ants, folded a basket out of a receipt, and placed the bee inside. I'm determined to keep this one.