Depressing winter poem I wrote a few weeks ago, lost, then found again

Poem Written On the Back of Instructions to Old Stereo Equipment

The grass rots sepia
like an old photograph, a dry
daguerreotype, and the remaining
patches of snow are where
the memory has faded.

When a bee mates
with the queen, he
dies. And when he stings
he dies.
Bees are obsessed
with Eros and
Thanatos.

I gargle saline
like the doctor instructs
me to and imagine
I am drowning.

And you are a mermaid
who has revived me
on the seashore.
Making love to you I feel
like a phantom limb,
both here and far away
and always
aching.