#todd dillard

Arts and Crafts with the Addict's Son Todd Dillard One time I came home from school to a bedroom painted halfway two shades of blue, rollers beached in azure-scabbed trays, lidless quarts of midnight and noon separating from their water like souring cups of milk, my mother sprawled on the floor, her hands two lilies powdered with moonlight. But there was beauty too: my mother, high up on a ladder, nailing her wedding dress to a tree, divorce paper twitching in the yard like chickens pecking feed. For years the nailheads sparkled at night, bespoke constellations as the grackles harvested the dress for nest-scraps and a dozen Texan summers chewed through stitch and seam with their 92 jagged teeth. If there is to be any truth in beauty I can't just speak about suffering as if there isn't some good in suffering too. As the coyote becomes mud for zinnias, so can these McDonald's receipts become a moon, greased napkins a banquet of clouds, crusted daubs of glitter glue every guiding star. A thousand miles from my origin my origin remains why I promise when I blue, I will completely blue. I will show you how you can make a sky out of anything. from the book RAGNARÖK AT THE FATHER-DAUGHTER DANCE / Variant Literature