by Carrie R. Hinton
(378 words)
My daughter has beautiful teeth. Tiny freshwater pearls, lacking the sharpness and staining of age. Sometimes I think she looks like a PEZ dispenser with her big head and candy teeth, the way they trickle out of her piece by piece, each replaced slowly but surely by an adult’s clunky molar or a wicked canine.
When I can get them, I keep her teeth in a small box by my nightstand. When one comes out in her apple at breakfast, I tell her stories about fairies that trade coins for bits of youth, and she eats up every word. I’ve collected a total of twelve now. Not a bad trade for some pocket change. She’s swallowed a few too, unfortunately—it’s just the way these things go sometimes—so there aren’t many left to get my hands on. At least I have these.
On especially hard days, when the weight of adulthood consumes me, I sit in my bed and take the little box out. Sometimes I’ll shake it, rattle them around, always gently. Like one of those rice shakers you make in preschool, but with more life in it. They sound softer every time, like they’re fading away. And I guess they are, but what am I supposed to do?
When I was pregnant with her, and she was just a fuzzy little smudge on a screen, I’d get the strangest cravings. They say it isn’t abnormal to want to eat certain things, even strange things like stone or chipping paint, when you’re pregnant. Just a sign that you’re missing something, some vital nutrient or other. Iron or calcium. Magnesium. It’s supposed to go away, but it doesn’t always.
When I feel extra down, I’ll take them out, just one or two, and roll them around in my palm, pick at their little hollows with my thumb nail. I might even tuck one between my lips. Or hold it between my back teeth, and suck.
Teeth aren’t like chicken bones, you can’t just bite them. They’re fragile, shatter into sharp little splinters that get wedged beneath the tongue or in the cheek. I only had to make that mistake once. Now—and only when completely necessary—I swallow them whole. They go down just like a pill.
END
Carrie R. Hinton is a Maryland based writer and poet. When she isn’t writing, she can be found rebuilding an old sailboat with her husband, and dreaming of where the Bay might one day take her.