When I was little, I met an old man who called himself
the bear who hibernates in the gray of the streets.
Every night, the old man laid his head
on what he thought to be the comfort of a stone, cold pillow.
He covered himself with the blanket of an onlooker’s steps, the wrapper of a burger he ate to
plump up his doe-like-figure, and the winds of the looming winter.
He told me after months of lying to rest on his king-sized bed, it had weathered to fit and envelop
his fragile being. 
Before resting, the old man always stared with his unblinking owl eyes, and smiled with his
rabbit teeth whenever I walked by.
His smile told me he was content, but at night, his dreams pervaded the warmth of my apartment
that was situated down the street.
He dreamt of my twin-sized bed. My pillows filled with the clouds that drifted above the city. He
dreamt of warmth.
He longed to leave his cove, but I knew he couldn’t because winter was raging.