Listen to Sabrina Almeida read Trypophobia:
The beekeeper does
not mind making a home of
herself not for them.
The insect crawls to
her eye and she is a comb,
welcoming it back.
Trypophobia:
fear of clusters of small holes.
Bees can smell fear but
the air is vacant, no
fear left for a beekeeper
who studies stoicism.
So the bee crawls on,
blind to the fear pulsing like
Honey splashed across
her vision, on every
landscape a Jackson Pollock
chaos resembling
the fruit of her labours /
fear. The eye is just one more
hole to make a home
in, one more place to
be afraid of carved out of
your very fabric.
“My poem ‘Trypophobia’ was based off of a collage I saw online of — as my poem writes about — this woman and there’s a bee crawling towards the corner of her eye. But all the while, her face just looks completely calm, almost blank in a way… I was really just thinking about: when we’re pursuing a goal, in overcoming these fears, does that make us brave? Or in ignoring it, are we losing a part of ourselves and how does that end up affecting us?”
Sabrina Almeida is a third-year student in the Rotman Commerce program, specializing in management with a focus in marketing. Outside of class, she is the president of UofT Spoken Word, an explorer of campus cafes, and a born sweet-tooth. In the future, she hopes to publish her own book of poetry and work in a marketing role that allows her to travel.
This work appears in the Winter 2020 edition of the UC Review: Translation.