Splitting the Cracks
I want to call its flaked limbs dead—
the tree outside that knocks
against the fogged glass. Knuckles
drier than bone, easier to snap.
I want to snap your bones
while we lie in bed, make two
out of one, so you can bend
in new ways. I want to give you
more bones, unmerge the merged,
a chance to begin again. We can
make flour out of anything
if we grind it down. Bone flour,
bark flour. The reaching tree
outside survives tall, protesting
its barrenness. In this bed I’m bare,
stripped down, wintered raw,
my touch cold as the pane
against the branch’s caress.
You hold out my hand, expose
each finger, slip yours through
my cracks, and when I think to ask
if the morning makes your bones heavy,
makes them creak like dry wood
under work boots, you tell me it’s time
for breakfast, let’s make pancakes, let’s
stay in. I roll back my palm, say I’ll make
the batter. I taste your teeth
from your kiss, your bones
in my mouth. Pancake made of bone. Pancake
tasting like kisses. Eating pancakes of you, with
you, toothless. The wind shoves the hard
crown of the tree and it pounds down
this time, no longer asking
but begging: Let me in. I turn my back
but you, you reach
over me, you crack the pane.
Wedding Vows First Draft
I sent my wisdom teeth in the mail
labeled from the tooth fairy
but my friends received empty envelopes
with holes punched through. I have since learned
it is illegal to mail body tissue
through USPS. I think about those teeth,
the one shaped like a dancer
with its molar roots tilted sideways
like little ballet legs, the one that crumbled
into three, each part bloody
and rotten. Who holds them tonight?
Lying in the surgeon’s chair
I sobbed over Imagine playing
through the speakers. It’s a lie,
I said. I understand that I was high
but I still can’t shake the feeling
of my pain ignored. When the surgeon
said it’s over I asked for my teeth back
and he gawked at me like I was the first
to request a return. Has he previously
thrown them all out in some waste bin
labeled toxic? I saved one tooth for years
until parting with it today as a gift
to the one I love. I like that he holds
what could be my remains. My last
wisdom tooth, the nicest one, its softness
somewhere between pearl and diamond,
and more rare than both. I wrapped it
in a plastic tooth-shaped tooth-coffin
that I’ve saved with the treasure-spirit
of an old woman who stows away
a family heirloom for that wistful
one day. Is romance to be found
in dentistry? Is love a form of letting
go? All I know is myself, I think
as I take his hand.