Nothing prepared you for the wall of technicolor
hides, like a display of ice cream flavors
not intended for your mouth or childhood
dreams flayed fleshless. Your daughter nears
each empty skin–brown bear, polar bear, tie-dye-
still-a bear, koala bear who-is-not-a-bear, electric
green frog, orange juice lizard, slate pug, neon
pig, pig-pink cat, crow-black dragon, why
aren't there birds or fish? Perhaps they splay
too many bones or slippery scales or feathers
just don't sell. She thumbs the varying
furs, feels the curls and fuzz and fluff, chooses
her favorite based on touch alone, which texture
is closest to your body’s or perhaps
farthest from it. She chooses a white bear
who would never survive the ice or tundra or
your childhood, smattered with pastel clouds
and wire-veined underside to ensure he glows
aurora in any climate, any continent, in even
the smallest hands. She will take the fabric
heart, shaped nothing like a heart, and as instructed,
she will rub it on her knee so her bear needs her,
her arms so he gives her big bear hugs, and then
press it close to her heart to give him her beating.
And she will close her eyes and squeeze and wish him
a good life you'd never think to wish,  
she will ask you leave your voice
inside him too, singing about the Mama
polar bear drifting with her cub, wondering why
he is awake while night comes on like a spoon
stirring snow, signing in a Slavic language
these bears don't understand and she
often refuses to speak even as she turns
the age you were when you left
the bear missing one button eye and the dog
with the floppy torn ear and all the rest
who kept you soft company in a country
you hardly remember holding or being
held by and your daughter cradles the colored hide
and knows she’ll get to put the missing stuffing
and heart and song inside and he will come to life
and you, despite your past, will have made this possible. 

—Julia Kolchinsky

Poet’s Website

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