Smile

Like most modern Americans, I am obsessed with teeth. Childhood punctuated early and often with visits to various dentists and orthodontists, cruel children laughing through perfect fangs viewed through the red shame of lunch with a retainer.

The first time I remember utilizing a mirror for self examination, I was eight. The mirror hung ceiling to floor on the back of the bathroom door showed me a short pale body with oversized blue eyes and long sunshine hair. I smiled without parting my lips and was surprised to find I found myself pretty.

The first time I remember being mocked for my teeth I was six. Within two years an elephant eared orthodontist told my black haired parents that my undersized, deformed jaw would not grow correctly and they stapled frowns over their straight, even teeth and spent one hundred and ten dollars every month so I could be an adult with a functional mouth.

My braces came off at thirteen. No one noticed. My teeth were slick, exposed, unnatural. I wore colored gloss on my lips. I chewed gum and crunched ice.

By sixteen, cruel mouths vomited laughter and I just puked. Splendid functionality ignored till mandatory family dinners, I wore my nails short and I jammed stiff fingers down raw throat tube, risking my enamel. That was my life till twenty.

At twenty and seven months, a steady diet of travel and tequila combined so that I lost my appetite for public approval. The holes in my cheeks formed black scabs that are now soft scars under my tongue. I grew my nails out and smiled at my teeth in the mirror.

At twenty one, there’s a gap in my atria. The hole from a wisdom tooth surgically removed and not stitched up. The wound will heal, but that was no milk tooth. Tongue probes soft edge, remembering hard red cored white bone.

I will die with straight teeth and scarred cheeks and I will be buried with red paint on my mouth.

(photo: www.asylum-photo.com)