"Will" by Todd Dillard

Todd Dillard's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, Booth, The Boiler Journal, and Electric Literature. His debut book "Ways We Vanish" is available from Okay Donkey Press. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter. Follow him on twitter via @toddedillard.

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​Will


Your death came with instructions. 
I buried your hands in bluebonnet fields. 

I glued your teeth to glow-in-the-dark stars 
and glued the stars to my basement's ceiling. 

I pinned your ears to the alder tree in my backyard, 
found them a week later wrapped in burgundy cocoons.

Your death came with extra parts too: 
Elbow skin like two used bar napkins. 

Soy sauce dish of your collarbone. 
White hair, which scurried into corners like mice. 

I asked the galaxy in my basement:  What should I do?
But it was too busy multiplying, 

new stars blossomed every day, 
some with two teeth, eight, a whole grin.
 
I placed the extra parts of you in a Ziploc bag, 
placed the Ziploc bag in my kitchen's junk drawer.
 
Spring arrived like an ex in a dream.
The hair ran into traffic, and then

the cocoons burst like touch-me-nots. 
No sign of the ears, though, 

no sign anything else had changed at all.
Just a feeling, like waking up to a soft knock on the door,

but when you answer there’s only light
snow, which vanishes as soon as it kisses the ground.