Requiem for a Dollar Store Christmas Bear

They cut off the lights to the Christmas tree
when they cut off the lights to the house.

The discouraged winds cried through the December wood
paneled walls of our single-wide trailer, held just back
enough by the melted butter morning sunlight
for us to open the one gift my mom
had scratched out of money
meant for flour and eggs.

Me and sissy each opened a plush white polar bear
who wore a thick red scarf that felt soft like
rabbit ears lying in green spring clover
and if you held real tight to his paw
like you were afraid he’d leave
he’d sing “Silent Night”
in twinkling tones.

He was alive.

At night, I took hold of his offered hand
pressed my face into his soft bear chest
and let his carols bury me below the river
of frozen walls weeping old dirges
I was still too little to understand.

We moved to my aunt’s house
when the water was scared stiff
and it wouldn’t leave its pipes.

My breathing and my body were both too soft
for her husband to share air or blood with,
so mom said, “Just try not to let him see you
and when we get money we can go home.”

I built blood ties, breathed air, kept warm
with the kinship of my white polar bear,
our scattered blankets rising snow,
our fire-swept igloo nestled in the tundra
of the soft light spacetime that let us in
between the box spring and the floor.

One night it rained in the winter,
and the crying ghosts found us
came flooding down the walls
begging for us to remember
how they used to be alive.

I closed my eyes
squeezed his paw
and held my breath.

Before the bear even got
to the part that says
all is calm, all is bright
the door cannoned open
and the winds of my uncle
lashed us across imagined borders.

Bear and boy thud against the bed.

“I told you not to play that shit at night cause I need to sleep and you just live to irk me.”

He mauled his shirtless path to the front door
lightning raging against itself in the sky
the bear dangling in terror and shock,
his last dull notes still spraying out.
The screen door screamed open
and rain punched the ground
even though the ground
was already dead.

He threw the bear into the thundering darkness of angry rain.

The walls were wailing.
My drumming breath kept time with them.
The world melted back into motion.
I crawled alone into our igloo.

My mom stood at the event horizon.

I spoke first.
“Do we have money yet?”