Every Story is an Origin Story

HALF-TRUTH

 We are the stories people tell about us.

MY STORY

He left.

MY BROTHER’S STORY

He came back from war the way a volunteer stumbles out of the magician’s box
having been sawed in half, unsure he is intact, wondering if there’s still a cut
inside him, the crowd’s applause a thick and suspicious humidity.

MY FATHER’S STORY

Single mother, eldest son of five, a wooden house the color of dead teeth,
a field behind it burning, always burning,
always asking in a child’s voice where are the children.

MY MOTHER’S STORY

To empty the bottle is to fill the bottle with yourself. 

MY MOTHER’S STORY

It doesn’t matter which hands as long as they hold you
until you tell them let go.

MY MOTHER’S STORY

Hair that turned white at the age of 16,
heavy handgun aimed at the drunk ceiling fan in my brother’s apartment,
blood blooming in the brain, ironing the sulci smooth,
pine box and amazing grace bag pipes.

MY MOTHER’S TRUTH

We are the stories people tell about us, but our sequels begin as our own.

MY SEQUEL

When there is snow
there is too much snow, but no snow
is not enough snow.

MY SEQUEL

Couch poor and drunk,
MFA, Brooklyn, salt-coarse hair
the color of the ocean horizon at night,
sea foam hands, gasp,
I do, I do.

MY SEQUEL

I show my daughter
the trick of speaking into cups.

I scream
a muffled confession.

When I’m done
she pulls the glass

from my hands,
tilts it toward her ear.

MY SEQUEL

He’s never coming back.

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Todd Dillard’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Electric Literature, Best New Poets, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. He is the recipient of a grant from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and his chapbook The Drowned Hymns is available from Jeanne Duval Editions. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.