Familiar Talk

Mother Black Bear sits on her haunches under the heavy limbs of the crabapple tree in the backyard. She rubs her eyes, her long snout, and looks up at the stars and sighs as if she, too, has been awakened by the clock tick, tick, ticking.

Through an open window we talk woman to woman—where each of us says, “I” and “you,” and “my dear,” and “you know” as freely as she pleases. We commiserate over aging parents and children and cubs that are not so much children and cubs anymore and now have children and cubs of their own. Together we craft a grocery list: bread, milk, chicken, egg, chicken, egg, chicken, egg, honey (only the sweetest kind), red wine vinegar, rosemary, thyme—yes, more thyme, time, time, please.

Petals fall to the ground as we sift through all that’s been lost and forgotten: the car insurance payment, the clothes wrinkled in the dryer, the name of the shy girl with the chestnut-colored braids who sat on the giant yellow school bus all those years ago then one day disappeared and never came back, the dirty dishes piled in the sink, to tell our partners about the opossum sleeping under the daylilies by the dilapidated woodshed, to tell our partners we love them one more time just in case they, too, disappear without warning, the library book to be returned, the garage light still on, the door unlocked, the scent of that fancy French perfume Aunt Franny spritzed on her slim, delicate wrists when asked what it meant to be a sophisticated woman, the mammogram appointment to be scheduled, to not worry so much about what might be found.

The moon dips behind the woodshed, and Mother Black Bear yawns before she ambles back toward the dark forest from which she came. I have not said one-tenth of what is pressing upon my heart and soul, my dear bear. The clock is tick, tick, ticking. It is always ticking.

*Originally published in This is How They Mourn, which won Thirty West Publishing House’s 8th Wavelengths Chapbook Contest.*