I am a tired teddy bear, collecting cobwebs in the corner of some careless child’s closet. My once-velvety fabric is forgotten now that it features rough spots, worn from being rubbed and washed over the years. Only a few loose threads cling to my left exhausted eye socket, the right button that survived the strain reflecting sadness through layers of dust. Paws, once padded with the softness likely to pillows, now hang hopelessly at my sides, faded fur now a faint palette of pathetic. I have become unlovable, left in the unwanted box with the looming letters, “Yard Sale,” scratched in slanted script on the side. Cheap stitches, clinging together without will, slowly split open to shower the other neglected knickknacks with scratchy stuffing. As my fluff spills like snow over stretched-out slinkies and beheaded Barbies, I wish that innocence wasn’t intertwined with obsolescence. Days of pretend picnics and cuddling close with you to cheerful cartoons as cereal is slobbered on my head are gone, replaced with repressed emotion and emptiness as thick as the dust bunnies that dance in the draft.