- Smiles are something I try not to understand. What's the difference between all teeth, no lip, and all lip, no teeth? Teeth are something I try not to have— it's all bark, no bite, I'm sorry, it's terminal —but they are still there, phantom limb and phantom pain. Dogs take bared teeth as a warning sign. Teeth mean snarl mean bite mean blood mean bone. Teeth mean polite mean kind mean smile just a bit wider, honey, for the cameras, see? Don't you want them to know how nice of a girl you are? Nice is a word that has too many meanings. Nice is too sharp and too flat and too dull; teeth-like in everything but their bite. That's what happens when you don't brush. I put bristle to exposed bone to piss-yellow shine on the days I can stand to remember. When I do— and it is not often, because habits are something I try not to have either— blood pools in my gums and I am left wondering what else is inside me. I came without bones and they had to surgically implant each and every shard, did you know that? Two-hundred and seventy-two as a newborn; I have been told I came out screaming, and went quiet only under the scalpel. As I got older, I was dragged to visits in the doctor's office to get them surgically removed, surgically fused, surgically sewn up. You see, there is a hole in the chest here, said the doctor, where the dogs have ran the skin clean through. The bones are implants; the teeth are all too real.
jul 31 2025 ∞
jul 31 2025 +