INTERVIEW WITH AN ADDICT’S SON
When did you first learn your mother was an addict?
It was like hearing a bell ring
every silence replaced with glass / shattering
the sound spreading like news or fire
through my childhood / my then / my now / my old age
so when my mother held me as a baby
her arms hummed with an addict’s shiver
when she touched my hair to tuck me in
she exhaled moths / when she laughed
she laughed as if
already drowned / I am getting lost
I knew / and then it was like I always knew
I cannot source the knowing
What about your friends?
a friend knows when they should
not know / when to step over
a nightgowned body
stiff as a specimen in the foyer
how to help
when you’re feeling mischievous
draw those chalk lines around her
how to say when do you think she will wake up
or die in a way that says I love you
and am willing
to approach your edges
Describe a typical day.
I would ghost home from school
and find her flesh-
puddled / boneless on the toilet
when I cupped my ear
to catch her breaths / she fell
she hit the ground / she burst
into a thousand down feathers
so many I couldn’t breathe
I couldn’t breathe / without breathing her
dinner that night would be fault
all of it mine / I ate every bite
Why do you drink so much?
If love exists
at the bottom of a well
it exists
in the bottom of a throat / I mean
if love exists in drowning
it is born in gasps / I mean / have I told you
my favorite bedtime story / it’s the one
where headlights cut into a scream
it ends when a window shatters / invents
new constellations / on the gravel / sky
Is there anything else you would like to say?
what I said in the beginning
about the bell
what I mean is
we all have glass tongues
and learning to speak / hard truths
invents a shattered language
what do you think it is I am
holding / up to the light
Todd Dillard’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including Best New Poets, Electric Literature, Nimrod, Split Lip Magazine, and Barrelhouse. He was a finalist for the Best Small Fictions 2018 anthology, and has recently been nominated for Best of the Net. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.
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