The teddy bear sat there,
     on a shelf, for years in a closet.
     Its fur, tattered, flattened where
     her hands used to hold it. One eye
     slightly higher than the other. The
     green ribbon gone, drifting along
     the wind. An outgrown bond.

To one day, it no longer belonged
     to a shelf, but in a box, then
     the back seat of their car
     finding a way to the nursing home.

To watch the frail hands of a resident
     who turned it over once in her hands,
     to be blessed by a memory, pressing
     the worn ear between her fingers
     as if checking whether something
     still lived there. An aching heart.

Wanting to tell the resident
     it was old, survived the love
     of a little girl’s bedroom, and
     years of not being needed. To be
     shelved among the dust bunnies.

Instead, the resident holds it
     against her chest,
     where age and childhood came
     closer together than imagined.

The lonely resident has
     already lived through so much.

The bear, after all,
     did not care whose arms held it.