I tell Ghost Dad I’m moving out
on him, and he shatters like a saucer

against sheet-rock walls. I cut myself
collecting him, bloody the papers

I wrap him with, spread him across
the boxes. I sharpie mark “fragile”, label them:

POTS AND PANS, BAKING SHEETS,
DAD, or STUFFED ANIMALS, DOLLS, DAD.

And when the movers ask why so many,
or why so heavy, I blush and tell them

to leave. And the hours it takes
to unload him are filled with shouting

muffled by cardboard. Packing is bad,
but unpacking is worse. He won’t stop squirming

for the super glue. It takes me months
to go through all my stuff, and he won’t wait:

Where’s my nose? You still haven’t unpacked my hands,
he says. “It takes time” I mutter, and he wants

to glare at me, but his eyebrows are hidden
with my baby photos and a Gideons International.

Christopher David Hopkins is a poet who hails from North Carolina. He received an MFA in Poetry from Minnesota State University at Mankato where he served as a Poetry Editor for the Blue Earth Review, conducted numerous interviews for KMSU's Weekly Reader, an author interview podcast and radio program, was a 3rd Place Winner of 2016's Robert C. Wright Award, and taught creative writing having been awarded the Nadine B. Andreas Graduate Assistantship.