My dentist is a skeleton, a happy misfit who pays his mortgage
by extracting molars that don’t deserve such an ending. Mine, #31,
didn’t expect such malicious violence after all these decades,
its nerves deadened with gray poison gas, a ghost reflection,
me looking at me examining the mechanism by which one’s tongue
flicks rapid fire, attached hermetically to living roots attached
to who knows what. It works seamlessly without thought, until
it doesn’t. Bacterial intervention, oozing their flexible membranes
into the tiniest of pores & microscopic pits, deconstructing bites
into gags. He forces me to take a trip & with his lovely magician
girlfriend begins the hijack service of extraction. It’s not normal
to float in space while invaders rip out your back right molar,
from its moist pink base while you look up and count their teeth,
trying to warn them about karma who will most assuredly pay them back.
