the bear knows too much

an ode to the multitude of stuffed animals on my windowsill

“Everything I’ve let go of has claw marks on it” — David Foster Wallace

Dear bloody diary, they’ve bled me dry till all that’s left is a pallid corpse and a teddy bear, its clothes stained red with button eyes soulless, yet all-seeing, with a piece of me embedded into a barely living being sucking away the force of love that binds me to the very sheets I bleed in. The mattress moans beneath me like a haunted mouth, swallowing sobs I forgot to stifle. My fingers twitch with ghost memories, nails rimmed in rust from scratching at the air for something—someone—who never came. Time is syrupy and stagnant here, like coagulated guilt pooling in the hollows of my collarbones.

I told my reflection to get a grip and it did. Even the walls recoil. This room used to hum with lullabies. Now it whispers only curses, every corner a confession booth, every shadow a wound that won't clot. I think the bear knows too much. I think it watches when I sleep, watches when I don't, watches when I press my heart to the floorboards just to feel something knock back. I went cherry picking with Demeter the other day, and somehow got my own cherry plucked away from behind my back as I tended to the roots that called my name: that teddy bear in the corner, remained. Staring into space, watching me turn until there’s only the dead luna moth on my windowsill and a pile of ashes that still burned.

“Write about me” they have all been about you, my love, my keeper: you’ve locked my heart away since the day I finally breathed and soon the love began to spread and grow on you like an uncured disease with a cure so complex it was better to perish than survive. What if all the butterflies in my stomach were born of anguish? Born of a woman who never learned to love without crying bloody tears and chipping hearts. Maybe it is conviction that left me bound in chains, born to serve that very same bear, on my windowsill, bearing my soul and my name.

I’m not sure when I stopped being a girl and became a mausoleum for tenderness. Maybe it was the night I kissed the moonlight through the window pane and it bit back. Or maybe it was slower—like drowning in lace, like love that unwraps itself from your spine until your bones hum hollow and you start calling it poetry.

Oh, how I loved them—with the whole garden of my being, thorned and trembling. I loved them until my veins were harp strings strung tight with longing, every pulse a soft scream: come back, come back, come back. But they never do. Not really. They leave pieces. Threads. Lip prints on cigarettes. Their breath still fogs my mirror. Their name still lives beneath my tongue like a swallowed ring. And I—I still bleed elegies into pillowcases, still write sonnets in spit and sweat, still wake up whispering their name like it’s a sacred wound I keep reopening just to feel holy.

Tonight I held my own hand like a lover. I traced each vein with a reverence I used to reserve for their back. I kissed my own wrist and tasted salt, and it reminded me of the sea I tried to become for them—vast, wild, endless. But they sailed away. And I remained. Just me. And the bear. And this heartbeat— this tired, bleeding thing still writing love poems to the ones who left me in ruins.