Goldberg Variations
What’s it like to almost be eaten, ?
asks my friend
When I tell her about the bear i met on my front porch
Just a girl standing in front of a boy (bear)
asking (frozen for a moment then screaming as high as i possibly could / the kind of way people do when they’re dying) him to love (not rip me to shreds) her
I can say this with certainty,
I reply
That there was a moment when that bear and I locked eyes
And I didn’t see the flashes of my little life
I saw its
That is to say
Hibernation
Weaning
Salmon dreaming
Et al. my screaming
Perhaps it was the normalcy of violence,
In my hood (rotten trailer park with pine trees and ravens that repeat the word hello until they grow old) people died ugly and nasty
Drunken neighbor yelling at my family (because ¾ of us are mexican we will never be free / my mama doesn’t seem to understand why this kills me)
So when the bear and i
—that is to say my premature death and early bedrest—
locked eyes
There was an absence
A moment, when it and i were just two things put on this earth, unfortunately crossed by open doors and unwashed salmon coolers