I must look after
the bones, the skin of those gone
into the afterlife, bring
flowers to funeral after funeral,
work the decay off their face,
as delicate as dentists working the caries
clean, the pulp chambers decaying.
Scrape the infection, the dirt away
with your dentist tools,
working the way through enamel
to pulp and cementum, farther and farther
into the apex root within,
until there's only room for a canal
within that you can fill with amalgam
and medicine. A dentist mirror held
my tongue in place.
The laughter shared at work
feels as distant as the farewell to the fear
for my tooth and well-being,
my chest laden
with it as if with a tombstone. I will lie
below a tombstone before I go there again.
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