The Bear

 You’d choose a bear over a man?!

You must be crazy…

But the bear never pretends to be gentle

Its growls are honest, its claws, a promise

It moves through the woods with purpose, neither cruel nor kind

But a bear never follows you home

It never slips something in your drink and claims you wanted it

A bear doesn’t plot ways to get you alone, doesn’t hide hate behind a smile

When a bear attacks, no one asks what you were wearing

No one says you shouldn’t have been in the woods

No one doubts your story or makes you prove every bruise

You’d choose a bear over a man?

You must be crazy…

Because a bear has never held me down, whispering threats in my ear

It never told my friends I asked for it, that I liked it, that I lied

A bear never told me I was imagining things, rewriting my own pain

A bear never asks you to be smaller

It accepts you as you are—wild, unbroken

And if it strikes, you’re left devastated, but it never sought you out

Grief

How do you explain grief to someone who’s never felt it?

The force that physically takes us to our knees

Wrenches screams from our bodies 

Leaves our throats raw and our eyes empty 

How do you tell someone that even though you’re stills here, everything about you is irrevocably changed? 

That you can’t look at yourself in the mirror anymore without seeing a ghost 

Every moment, happy or sad, tinged with an aching loss 

The silence that becomes louder than any words you could find to try and explain 

What words are there to explain that life just, doesn’t feel like life anymore?  

That time moves, but you’re somehow stuck, frozen in a past that no longer exists

The warmth of the sun feels colder, the familiar now strange

Breathing becomes a conscious act, each inhale a reminder that they no longer do

How do you make someone understand that grief isn’t a moment, but a landscape you learn to walk through?

It’s the empty chair at the dinner table, the sound of a favorite song that cuts through you

It’s a weight that settles into your bones, making every step heavier

Yet somehow, you keep walking, because what else is there to do?

There’s nothing to do.