The Tragedy of Misconception

Kelly Ferguson

“We are all bears,”

he told me,

one of the cryptic poet thoughts

he always had after a long night

of Dylan and caffeine.

I can only guess at his meaning.

Perhaps he felt that some people move like the totems

of unspoken religions,

and some people rise up from the earth

to press their shoulders against the sky,

and some people feel as if some Goldilocks

has broken into their lives,

rushed through the peace of their cottages

into their beds,

and some people find themselves stretched flat

before a fire, while couples drunk

on pink champagne make love on their skins

But I never understood-

I who loved him, the empty longing love

for someone whose eye color

I was unsure of.

If only I had been able

to submerge myself into his art,

suck my own name from his tongue,

kiss him deeply enough

to taste the poetry, shifting and frigid as broken ice,

taste the poetry before the need for interpretation.

If only I had been able to whisper, “Yes.

We are all bears.”