After his girlfriend left, father found a cabin
infested with earwigs skittering on curling linoleum.
We sat on cracked black vinyl barstools to eat
poptarts and potpies. Now I know
how he fought himself there, fought
the long dock, sleeping pills and his .45
to stay alive among the foxes and rattlesnakes,
wondering: What is left? How he needed a midday
nap to regain composure, to face us, face
his no-longer-husband, no-longer-law-professor
self. But we still called out: Dad? Dad? so he’d know
the title was still his, we were still his. One day
we three crested the hill where the pine trees opened
and there grazed the mama bear with her cubs.
Seeing us, she rose up, her chestnut fur glistening.
Her young sniffed the air, waiting for her to act. Father
put his palm flat on my chest, whispered: Take
your brother. Back away slowly. Don’t turn to run
until I’m out of sight. No matter what you hear,
don’t come back. A low growl rose from her throat.
I grabbed my baby brother by the overall straps
and began to walk backward, keeping one eye
on the bear, one my father. Today I can still see him
facing that bear, how the tender back of his head
was so still, how he was alone.
©
is the Editor of Flagstaff & Sedona Business News and a freelance copywriter. Her creative work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Bellingham Review, Drunken Boat, MiPoesias, and Harpur Palate, and other journals. She holds an M.A. in English from Western Washington University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she was the first-year creative writing fellow and served as Associate Editor of Blackbird.
