like teeth. Close up and two dimensional, as they are.
I sit in the chair with my bib. He’s gesturing,
pointing to what I often conceal—never smiling
broadly, or: only when forgetting. Here is the canine,
he says. Like a dog’s, he says. And the molars
with their two-pronged or fused roots.
All is white and gray and a deeper gray, the darkest
parts not even teeth but the sinuses like storm clouds.
I see a child’s toes after a long bath.
Tulips bleached of all color. But more:
of the sea or cave—what is found where
there is little light and delving is necessary.
Farther north, that lake I love and the crystal
ice structures formed in its wet, wind-rocked caves.
Somewhere other, the white sand anemone without
its magenta—so disparaged, so delicate.
