Sweettooth

 

When I met her she was nineteen and had no teeth

She said she'd had a serious sweet tooth 

that led her to the dentist one sunny day

where all her teeth were pulled out.

He fitted her for a new set

but somehow she just never got around to using them.

I heard her tell this story many times since

and she always laughed at this point,

like it was some really funny joke she'd just been told.

Somehow, she said, she felt free-er without them.

Then, whoever she was talking to would be slightly disturbed at this

and she'd give them a big smile- 

the strangest smile a nineteen year old girl had ever given them.

But they wouldn't know how to take that either

and would try to leave the smile just there,

exactly in the place where her teeth should have been.

I used to think about those teeth

sitting on a shelf in her room like statues of teeth

and I'd watch her take good care of them and dust them in my mind's eye

Or sometimes she simply ignore them.

Either way, those teeth took root and began to grow

in my imagination

and I have reached the conclusion

that she might have had the right idea.

 

Voiceover: Anke Dessin

Music: Waltz from "The Stone Flower" by Sergei Prokofiev