By Dylan Willoughby

for Jamie

Break me in two:  
Bury one half of me,
And plant the other.

This is a race past the finish.
Ghosts percolate.
It’s not that I have left you.

I linger awhile on the splendor of rust 
Slowly dying wrought iron,
Its death so much slower than mine.

You once imagined things 
And printed them in 3D.
Consider me an imagined thing.

Among the diffuse abandonments,
Find me.  Whisper your joke about
Muffins in the oven.  Abide.

We spend our lives thinking of the opposite of here.  
But here is everything, here will never leave.

---

Dylan Willoughby is a permanently disabled poet and composer, born in London, raised in Canada, the US, Chile, London, and elsewhere, and currently living in Los Angeles.  Dylan’s poetry has appeared in Stand, Agenda, Shenandoah, Salmagundi, Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review and other journals, and Chester Creek Press has published three limited-edition chapbooks.  He received an MFA from Cornell, and fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell.  He record music as “Lost in Stars,” and have been featured by The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Echoes (NPR), KCRW (NPR), Nylon, XLR8R, Insomniac, Impose Magazine and elsewhere.