I Bear Witness (an exercise in personification)

It is almost like she is a little girl again, and I am her little brown bear that she takes everywhere.

It is familiar – the way her chocolate brown curls are covering my body, as she squeezes me so tight.

Tonight, tears are falling from her cheeks at an alarming rate and absorbing into my brown fur.

I don’t make a sound, but I wish with every ounce of my stuffing that I could take her pain away.  

I wonder, briefly, how  many tears have fallen onto me over the years.

She murmurs into my body. I can’t understand fully what she is saying.

I have spent most of my days lately tucked away on a shelf.

I see the sun rise and the sun set.

I watch her laugh as she spends time with friends.

I watch her schedule herself to be too many places at once, and then wonder how she is going to get it all done.

She is a beautiful young woman.

She has outgrown me.

Most days, anyways.

But today, she needs me. And I am there. As I have always been.

I absorb her tears until she cannot cry anymore, until she rests on my body.

Her head fits snugly into a mold she has created from many years using me as a pillow.

“Oh Snuggles,” she sighs.

She fingers the familiar remnants of a hole in my neck – a scar from a run-in with an overzealous dog. I remember how kindly her Grandmother had sewed it for me. She was a gentle woman.

“You always smell the same,” she says as she breathes in deeply.

I want to tell her that she does too. That I miss the days of her and I.

Even the days that she forced me to put on a bonnet and a diaper and lay in her play crib while she force fed me bottles.

She props me up, and stares into my dark eyes. Her eyes are red and puffy, her hair is a mess. She is exhausted.

She hugs me tight again, and begins to fall asleep.

Tomorrow, I will end up on the shelf again.

She will be smiling again.

But tonight? Tonight it’s me and her.

Together.

Tonight, I will make her feel safe.

Just like I’ve been doing since she was just a little girl, with her little brown bear.