your tooth will still be missing on wednesday

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July 15, 2021

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*Context: I spent most of 2021 without a front tooth due to an infection from a childhood accident.

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This morning I awoke

Groggy, in a haze between dreamland and reality

Believing that if I refuse to open my eyes

Everything would settle back into a space

That is okay

With those who are perpetually tired.

 

But eventually the Night Owl tone

Sends bursts of unforgiving chimes that

Slice through the mental fog,

A flash of unwelcome lightning

In a dry mind that is already prone to fires.

 

I can’t fight the looming responsibilities

So instead I fight last night’s 4am Alice;

What a fool she was to succumb to the

Lures of the Internet,

To watch irrelevant videos of irrelevant people

Going about mundane lives completely irrelevant to my own monotonous days.

 

I jump in the bathtub for a two minute shower,

The last thirty seconds turned ice cold 

So that my bathroom’s frigid fingers may

Tase it’s way into my limp body,

Limp mind,

Limp being

Until I am gasping for air,

Giggling at the stupidity of using self-induced stress as a means of feeling again,

And finding it even funnier that it works.

 

On my way out

I catch a glimpse of my gapped-tooth smile

The face of a child trapped in 22 years of waking up too late.

 

That thought alone humbles me to stay a minute longer

As it dawns on me that

I am

Never going to change.

 

ALICE!

My mother screeches,

Your tooth will still be missing on Wednesday,

There’s plenty of time later to admire 

The hole in your mouth.

 

Mother, your empathy is like a wounded soul.

I stick my tongue out through

The gap once more

Pretending to pout at an impatient woman

With bigger things in mind than a kid

Who can’t wake up on time.