Trinity M.

An Open Letter To Teddy Bear 

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last held you. 

                                                                            I can’t make any excuses. 

I see you daily, you are patient 

sat over the blankets of fleece and white, ruling over your throne of cotton and linen sheets,

waiting for the day I come home and pick you up again,

                                                                                             like I used to. 

You lay the same way you did in my brown boarded crib,

soft and expectant. 

When I would wake up crying and roll over onto you, 

you never rolled away. 

Happily, 

                 you dragged at my side through vegetable aisles,

                 sat next to me at the green plastic covered pizza parlor booth,

                                                                                                                      suffocated

                under the metal zipper of my Tinkerbell backpack.

And when my child attention span got the best of me, 

        When I left you alone in the red race car shopping cart, 

                   banged on the glass door of the closed pizza parlor where you lay on the ground of the arcade,

                                forgot to open the bag when I got home so you could breathe in the day, 

you never sank into the 

                                          seclusion.

Never left me, 

                                                  even if I left you. 

When I was more concerned with the girls at school liking me, 

you remained faithful. 

Even though I eventually stopped stuffing you in my school bag, 

you were happy to see me when I got home.

I would tell you about the girls pulling at my thin blonde hair, 

poking at the sugar devils on my nose, 

calling me ugly. 

When I 

            didn’t

                       feel

                                beautiful,

you sat with me exactly the same, 

because you would never care what the mirror reflected back at me. 

You remain as 

                       glorious

                                          as ever. 

Your fur is no longer fluffy and golden, 

but rough and dingy, 

almost gray. 

The stuffing in your neck has 

                                                      deteriorated

leaving you c r i p p l e d, 

unable to hold your head up without assistance. 

Your bow tie

                           fell off years ago. 

The plastic black eyes that 

rest right above

your nose are almost invisible;

those eyes that have seen so much. 

Absorbed my fears from the 

                                                    void

my father would never even attempt to fill, 

time 

        after time 

see me in the same pain. 

Witness my first love, 

                                   watch it f a l l a p a r t, 

                                                                        and wait for me to pick the pieces back up as I          

                                                                                                         broke my own heart. 

As 15 years of life 

                                        went by,

you took a bigger, 

strongerbeating so that 

I wouldn’t have to. 

But despite it all, 

                           you have aged with

                                                               grace.

Even as I get older, 

that child attention span 

                                       comes back to me,

and I,

                                                         forget,

                  about you. 

But please know, that even if you’re not always on my mind,

you are the constant, 

resting 

under my head

when no one else does.