My grandmother kept her dead husband’s teeth
in a velvet box beneath her bed.
Not the dentures—his real teeth,
lost one by one in the war,
but saved in a tin that smelled of tobacco
and the particular rot of old metal.

She would take them out on anniversaries,
arrange them on her good tablecloth
like a smile that had outlived its face.
She said it was important to keep what you could,
to not let the earth have everything.

I understand this now, the way we hoard
the evidence of having been loved.
The voicemails I can’t delete.
The shirt that still smells like your sleep.
The way I keep returning to the places
where we were happy—the diner on Route 9
where you always stole the cherries from my drink,
the motel above the lake where we watched
a storm move across the water—as if the happiness
might still be there, waiting.

Last month I found a baby bird
on the sidewalk, still feathered, still warm,
already gone. I dug a hole in the garden
with my hands, buried it beside
the tulips that never bloom.
My grandmother would have kept the bones,
washed them in bleach until they were white
as the inside of her palms, white as the lie
she told about his death being peaceful.

Instead I watered the earth
and waited for something to grow.
Instead I am learning to let go
of what I cannot keep, which is everything,
which is the only lesson worth learning,
which I will forget by morning.

McLord Selasi is a Ghanaian writer, poet, and performing artist. His work has appeared in Panorama, Apricot Press, The Shallow Tales Review, Shoegaze Literary, Trampoline, Rough Diamond, Isele Magazine, Subliminal Surgery, Eunoia Review, Poetry Journal, Graveside Press, and elsewhere.

Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson