Your Little Bear has sat in your closet since you were nine and 
decided that you were too old to love it
Its threads have gone loose, and its eyes have lost their shine, and you feel bad even though
You have done nothing

It was he who fought for it to stay upstairs, disrupting the ‘nice’ furniture. Its left rocker had loosened, and its right rocker had been tied back with twine.

It would go ka-thunk when

She stood by the sea, expecting to say nothing more
But her mother pried and pried, pecking away at her will
To keep quiet; like the seagulls in the faded corners of her vision
who drove clams into
the rocks