The Maynard
Spring 2018

Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan

Nestled deep between its steppe land and the
Tobol river, a brown bear with your namesake
is being harboured in a human prison. For a
month after we stopped talking—the fifth time—
I tried to imagine you were dead, entombed
in a mausoleum pressed between the highway
overpass and the local university’s residence
building. Here, where you have been resigned
to a hollow echo and the refraction of glass that
is shattered with purpose. I read that the bear was
abandoned by the circus after mauling two unassuming
patrons, but even that is too aggressive a form of
erasure for me. Kazakh authorities found no shelters
to harbour this hunger, and so she was sentenced to an
imprisonment of kitchen scraps and a far-too-small
keep. Months after the month of your pseudo-death,
when the eventual peace that comes from such an event
never did, I sentence myself to the exile of our memories.
I imagine you free. Enough to frisk about the largest
enclosures of a post-pandemic world, maybe a shopping centre,
sinking your teeth into whomever you choose, unassuming
as they may be. Google tells me Kostanay has six institutions
of higher education, but can’t seem to discern if any of
them are stationed next to a cemetery. Perhaps this is why
after 15 years they decided to release the bear, carting
her off to a small zoo north of the river. Though I can
assure you that the bear is still alive, I’ve just decided
that I much prefer north of the river to any of the current
euphemisms for death. But I promise that even in the worst
of my imaginations, I wouldn’t wish you to a prison
or an upstate farm or any zoo north of any river.