Sherine Gilmour
SHE-BEAR
1.
When I first felt the blood clot’s
warm cherry pit behind my knee,
I did nothing. I thought
about going to the doctor or urgent care.
Instead, I scooped coffee.
Cleared the plates and said goodnight
to my son and paid our bills.
I did this for days.
2.
Tongue, a stinging legend.
Gums, a Rorschach red.
Wrinkled nose, small eyes
peering over the land she owns.
Fur like fog, like willow mulch.
The she-bear stalks the house. Like Keats,
who once wrote “Darkling” for his
evening-ending nightingale,
I think of her. I used to walk
early mornings hoping for a glimpse.
But now, doped up
on blood thinners and steroids,
I’m frightened of everything,
the twig’s snap, the nurse’s needle.
3.
A week passed, a few days more.
Driving on the highway, a thump
skewed in my chest, then a sideways
ringer beat-half-beat later.
My stomach curdled. Without thinking,
I reached down to my leg,
and felt for my clot, so much smaller,
barely there. Did I really need
to drive to the hospital?
If I walked through those gaping doors,
the nurses would just
show me I am powerless.
4.
More than ever, death is everywhere,
the sky and the waters.
The mailbox, the school yard, the next slip
of medical paper in my hands.
There are many deaths,
and each day asks what death I would like.
5.
The first time I tried,
I could not make it up our driveway.
The doctor explained my blood
had thinned. I would adjust.
A few weeks later,
I took my son out on his scooter.
I tried to run, just
a few steps, and ended on all fours,
a bright Saturday morning, my son
too far up ahead for me to help
if something happened. My knees on a stranger’s grass,
light-headed, blurry-eyed, panting.
6.
There was a time, as a child,
when I thought I was going to die
at the hands of my stepfather,
and I taught myself how to walk, heel-toe,
through the house,
from my bedroom to the bathroom,
even as he bounded his full weight
up the stairs, or paced the hall with a meat
tenderizer in his hand, or stood in his
underwear blocking the door and cracking
his fingers over and over again.
I would not give him the pleasure
of a fitful squeal. I tried not to stumble or fall.
No. I would not even try
to run. Now, with the blood clot
still in my leg, I take the dog for walks
and pretend to talk to the bear.
In my head, a constant message.
I tell her how I used to walk
content in my own power.
I tell her inside me
is an endless No.
7.
She slides from shadow into shadows.
She slips between. Her brown against
the brown of trees.
When I finally saw a slip of her, a moving curve,
Slow as a glacier, old as the world.
I thought: She is sick of herself,
sick of her own eternity.
Ready to live or die.
I am sick of the question, too.
8.
I want to glimpse her again,
hear her teeth tear garbage
or meat or rotted trees—
smell her nit-infested opulence.
Last summer, she broke a neighbor’s shed,
cracked another’s hive. Swatted
a garage door, her thick paws
wracking it over and over.
I, too, have wanted
to tear down houses.
9.
Darkling, I still want
to hear your husky breath,
smell rumors of your stench,
find clotted fur mounded with fleas
on the base of clawed-out trees.
and yet I’m frightened.
I want to turn a corner,
see your teeth-spires, drizzle and drool.
Slow as a glacier, old as the world.
I want to see you lick
rancid animal fat from your lips
because I am nothing
but filled with memories
too boring and brutal
and other people’s words.
Promise me:
Your jaw on my jaw,
your strength against my strength,
your paw on my chest,
and I promise
I will try to have courage again.