Lara Chamoun
Mama Bears You
The mirror repeats itself
until it doesn’t. You step through,
barefoot, bareboned, raw,
into a wooded room filled with
everything you never told her,
still wet and red.
The bear is waiting,
smells like oranges crushed into the sun,
juice turned thick, spoiled sweet.
Her breath is heat and rot, damp musk,
it should not have made it through winter.
Grandma made marmalade in a copper pot,
stirred until it clotted,
until it clung to the spoon like fat to torn skin.
She said patience is the key to keeping things whole.
She did not teach you how to hold the bear
who licks your fingers. Your hands smell of sugared glass,
bear’s tongue warm and rough, the scrape of
grandma’s hands against citrus rind,
peeling pith, gnawing, knowing the bitterness.
You cannot tell if the bear is bleeding
or if the blood is yours.
She presses into you, fur matted, sticky.
You remember the first time your mother handed you a knife
and told you to cut away the bad parts.
The first time she told you to hush.
The first time she looked at you like you were something
she had not meant to make.
The bear growls in a voice you remember,
low and patient, like a story told through clenched teeth.
You do not know if she wants to be fed or forgiven.
Grandma says a hungry mama is a dangerous bear;
not when she trembles for her cubs,
but when starvation hollows her heart from her ribs,
when marrow births blood to fill the womb
where she shaped you, newborn honey,
from her grisly, cloying wildness.
Grandma taught you to never run;
that just as she’d learned to redress,
to grow back into her clothes and to walk again,
mama bear will too.
The bear is heavy in your arms.
She will not leave you be.
It is a carving to be considered a daughter.
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