Permanent Record

Oberlin College Creative Writing Anthology 2010

 
 

The Wind is a Terrifying Stranger at my Face

You say I remind you of a bear

but you do not know
how the bones of a bear

and the gut of it
rot beneath the leaf fall,

the vast topography of snow
and throughout it the pines,

that if you came close
I would tear you limb
from limb.