Teddy Bear
by Zachary Weber
Runestone, Volume 1 

Teddy Bear

In a bronze-framed photograph
on top of the coffee table,
the infant me is fast asleep, 
cradling an 1898 Paul Blanchard 

violin instead of a teddy bear—  
the same violin that sleeps 
on the splintered surface of my desk
next to an avalanche of sheet music

in a room where I spent hours 
arguing daily with a jet-black 
spray-painted music stand 
in between fits of pacing

from the bedside, to the kitchen,
to the Gateway computer and back—
while massaging the static out
of the tendons in my forearm—

the type of gesture a child 
can only inherit from his father.