The forest
cups your house,
secure as held hands.
You ride bikes along the perimeter
with a puppy,
russet and wrinkled
like a forgotten apple.
But there are bears,
black and lumbering.
They sharpen claws across
pine trees –
remember the scratch marks?
How the sap wept
golden.
We swam out into the lake,
the cold contracting our chests.
A shocking awareness
of our own lungs
pressed against bone.
You said
there were eels,
so I never let my feet
touch the bottom.
Halfway across
you remembered,
bears can swim.
Keeping heavy muzzles
tipped above the water.
We floated on our backs
and listened for echoes.
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