Fire Eater, Premolar, Bone

It’s eight a.m. and the dentist has her hands in my mouth,
probing for something I don’t understand. My tongue
fights against the pressure. I don’t know anything
about teeth—not my own, not my lover’s—but the dental
hygienist cradles my head, warms my chattering.

*

I was twelve when I had my first extraction: eight
stalactites tucked tight in a crooked cave. My gums
overcompensated for my smile.

*

Sometimes when we kiss, I feel your teeth
clink against mine: the quietest champagne
toast. We are not embarrassed anymore when this happens.

I am not embarrassed by most things.

*

My mouth is small, but that doesn’t mean
no one has asked to be inside it.

*

A fire eater does not actually eat fire, nor
does he breathe it. It’s a trick of blinding
light and gullibility and kerosene. All dragons
are dead.

*

A recurring dream: I am small. My teeth
won’t stop growing. I open my mouth wider and wider,
choking on my newfound sabers, unable to regain
control. My mouth is a remote-control toy, and I
have lost the remote, or someone else has taken
it, or I do not know where the remote is.

*

Two boys bloodied my lip at age six.
This is not particularly surprising, though
I do wish it had only happened once.

*

I am not a fire eater and neither are you.
I have never swallowed a fire eater.

We go to the fire eater’s show to feel something, wait
all day in line for even just the possibility of one
overpriced ticket. I won’t throw my stub away
when it’s over.

*

Another time, another place, a dentist
shames me into flossing. Your gums are angry,
she insists. They are inflamed. You just gotta suck
it up. She tells me her boyfriend is a princess.
He doesn’t hunt or fish like her father.

*

I bought you a million gold castles in my mind
the first time we slept together. While I was inside
you, I kept thinking, your mouth is a home
I want to live in. Lips, please let me worship you.
I want to take communion under your tongue.

*

When I was young, I loved a girl with a tongue
piercing. She would roll it back and forth, a secret
game, a flirtation for the two of us. Now I am old
and I do not love her but that’s okay because my gums
survived unscathed.

*

The roof of my mouth is permanently scarred.

I do not know if this is true.

*

A fire eater eats fire only in the eye of the public.
After work, the fire eater is sad or lonely, or he celebrates
his latest victory, the deceiving of small children, or he
thinks nothing of it. He buys a bag of grapes, picks
up a loaf of bread. He weighs a rotisserie
chicken in his wax-licked palm.

*

My cupboards are bare like teeth newly sprung
from metal braces: shiny, organized. Not a crumb
in sight.

*

I check my teeth in the mirror before our first
date. I stand in my best jacket. I am a showman like
the fire eater, but I won’t make you pay to see
me up close.