Todd Dillard | In the Dream Where My Father Doesn’t Have Cancer He Makes Origami Animals

December 2018

Todd Dillard

In the Dream Where My Father Doesn’t Have Cancer He Makes Origami Animals

First a hare hops out of his upturned palms, then several uncertain leverets. Grackles bloom from his fingers, tigers, a dragon belching flames spiky as a pineapple stem. We're on a porch I don't even have, a wicker bench creaking under our weight, iced teas tucked between our thighs. He’s showing me how to make weasels, snakes, fist-sized stallions come to life, how to whisper words like incandescent and valor into them, gifting them movement. But I can't. My swan's wings are lopsided, motionless, my boar's tusks broken, my words all pomegranate and autumn, and, anyway, he's flying away, being lifted by a bouquet of herons. In dew-bright grass paper animals tear and topple. I pick them up, press them to my chest. In my hands antlers wilt, a wolf blooms, the hare unfolds as it kicks.

I found out my father has early-onset cancer, so early that the treatment for it is to just… wait. This kind of waiting strikes me as immediately incomprehensible — not just because it requires my father and our family to grapple with a kind of prescribed listlessness, but also because we’re all too aware my father’s body is certain to — within a year — start becoming uninhabitable. And yet, all things considered, he’s doing well! Here my father is, living a life that is precious and full and active. And here I am, awkward, uncertain. The impetus for the poem grew from this disconnect. Additionally, years ago I read Ken Liu’s short story “Paper Menagerie,” and the metaphor of living origami must have stuck with me because I didn’t recall his story until I finished drafting and editing this poem. It’s a powerful and beautiful story about cultural acceptance and a mother’s love, and the image of living origami has stayed with me all these years.

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