“I speak because I am shattered”
—Louise Gluck

I had no one, during quarantine, to touch 
my teeth’s chipped glyphs, unnerved 

serrations migrating on the jaw. I nearly longed for 
fingers to leave their prints on my cavities, 
turning the air I breathed to blades. My memory sharpened 

after seeing the dentists 3 months too late for one 
of many problems they knew I couldn’t afford. 

My numerous damages are nocturnal. They sleep with me, 
holding my face like a mask as I mistake poison 
throbbing in my cheek for a heart in my mouth; 
tongue half numb, skull littered with pink slips.

“Your insurance doesn’t cover this,”— Fluorescent light 
flooding my lake-wide mouth, a red buoy 
bobbing near the throat drowned in water, mist, 
the high-pitched cry metal instruments made.

Now the sound follows me inside 

my head, 
echoes of phantom music. Tinnitus, it’s named, interrupting 
silences gifted when I walk on a vacant Harlem street. 

“Don’t spend the money” I’d say to my mother, 
naïve to think I could bear living
             with my mouth’s irreparability. 

It’s not her fault I’ve had 8 fillings and an extraction, 
but when she carries that guilt it’s enough 
             material for my unwarranted revenge; 

slipping my tongue              in the hole              in my mouth— 
regret discolors              contentment              like a tooth’s 
composite,              becoming a crown
memory wears to brace              the bone’s decaying animal.
             No,              I meant              enamel