This Tooth Was A Relic Torn Asunder

A poem

I know that’s my tooth. No, It’s the damn truth! I remember getting it pulled out and these little details there about.

A bonsai tree’s beautiful fired clay pot in frosted glass walled waiting room off dark mall concourse entrance near the parking lot in nineteen eighties kind of office park.

Got in that fender bender at the roundabout next to my dental surgeon. I must explain. I still remember this without a doubt. That rotted hole left me in throbbing pain. All those years of guzzling sugary drinks. Bacteria in plaque dug this deep pit where my enamel’s gone, that dentist thinks. I know my mouth hurts and I must submit.

Been six or seven thousand years somehow. Don’t ask me. I’m not built to do the math. I know I should report myself, right now! It’s wrong, this sort of thing. I’m off the path.

Extract a clump of tooth root DNA. Transfer this part of me into this box where I feel like I might still have some say. Where it feels when this thinking me thing talks.

And I do have a self however played. And I do have visible light sensors, an Xray and an infrared upgrade. I see what’s mine in this tooth dispenser.

Now I remember, I took that tooth home and put it in that little plastic box. Was living breathing primate way back then with a real heart and a brain, flesh and blood, walks.

So who or what is telling me what I can think when we don’t ever have that much of a choice in the first place. I do try! Yes, yes, this tooth is mine. It’s surely such!

And something’s hidden in that cavity. Long after my tooth was extracted, pain. Long after the host brain’s depravity, something’s awakened, that tooth is to blame.

William J Spirdione 2023