2013

M lost her first baby tooth today. It terrified her––a border crossed––the rooted bone unearthed. She continually wobbled it with her tongue anxiously. She thought she might accidentally swallow it––kept asking me if it was still there. I said ‘You’ll feel the gap when it’s out’ remembering my own child tongue feeling into the grooves of the chasm, the blood joint, warm liquified space that sinks into jagged edges of the adult tooth growing beneath. I felt a rush of love for her. My daughter coming of age. Her first tooth now dispatched to the tooth fairy––a flowered girl creature who hordes the calcified bones of children. Lives in a dwelling built of numinous bone hidden in a thicket of the woods. Walks regularly in nearby fields among the height of perennial inflorescence, drawn like a drone to the undercurrent of scent, to those tricky prisms, extraction of Ragweed, Antigen, Dander. And as she walks tinned light feathers down on the wet plumage, a candy array of sun. Oh the starry faced flowers––nape-eyed with velveteen skins. The girl-creature loves most to take into herself their crystallines scent––to enter into the kaleidoscopic.