The Shape of Grief
Written 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.
Poet Nazir is a writer and an editor here on ThePoetsHub. Outside this space, he works as a poet, screenwriter, author, relationship adviser and a reader. He is also the founder & lead director of PNSP Studios, a film production firm.
