The Shape of Grief

By Lilly Bechtel

On the side of the mountain road,
a black bear, with the soft shovel of her nose,
is pursuing a mason jar,
pulled from a barrel of trash,
in front of a line of trees.
Her back, rounded with devotion,
rolls on the oars of her shoulders,
as tic, tic, tic goes the work
of her claws and then
thwop goes the top and she is
inside, amber spilling out
on her paws and who knows how long
I will stay here, parked,
under the spell of a hunger
that is oblivious,
the way this morning
in the shower
my body didn’t care
that I was busy when it doubled me over,
palms gripping the skin above my knees,
one wet hand at a time
lifting to hold the wall
as if to hold time in place—
while I slid, anyway,
into that shower last Easter,
when you bent me over,
entered me from behind,
crying out—
a wild animal
this and now this—
the layers of one enormous back
shuddering
toward the sweet.

Source: Poetry (December 2021)

Lilly Bechtel  is a writer, musician, and trauma-informed yoga instructor with 15 years of experience offering yoga and writing workshops in correctional facilities, rehabilitation centers, and veterans’ hospitals. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, elephant journal, The Huffington Post, Barrow Street Journal, The Faster Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and USA Today, among others, and her work and music has been noted in The New York Times and featured on NPR. Once, she was part of a ladies arm wrestling league that swept the nation. Another time, she lived in New York and wrote about what it might mean to have a vampire fetish. In July 2020, Lilly completed an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson and since returning to her hometown of Charlottesville she has continued to perform and tour with her band Night Teacher, as well as work on a grassroots level to bring accessible arts and body-based healing to her community. She is currently working on her first book of poems, The Likelihood of Touch, as well as her second album of original music, Better Human.

Books

best practices for yoga with veterans, contributing editor