Beartooth

by Callan Wink

The smell of a bear, Thad thought, had the flavor of nightmare about it. Putrefying flesh, fresh shit, all held together with something cloying and sweet, like smashed huckleberries just starting to ferment.

That over the course of a man’s life there would be days that made the dawning of the next seem like some kind of punishment, or perverse reward, for simply surviving the last.

Motherhood conveys responsibility. It conveys a certain ache. It doesn’t grant knowledge.