Milk Teeth

I want to be beautiful like my sister and make art that isn’t ephemeral

Use my teeth to cut through firm vegetal fibers

I know we’re all made of that same pulpy stuff

I want to shrink my body down to the size of empty and sift through the

open pockets in my old shirts

Everyone will know I don’t eat bread

when I’m in a photo they’ll say where’s she?

I didn’t even notice her

When I was little I watched an ice cream cone melt all down my arm transfixed by the shrinking scoop unconsumed

How can you expect me to believe that matter is neither created nor destroyed - if that’s true then there are lost molecules of my mother scattered around in various places

What happens to the food she doesn’t eat anymore?

Does it rot on the shelves and go back into the dirt?

She said she finally feels under control but it still seems unsettling to me that she’s basically

a mosaic missing half of her original pieces

She hopes no one notices they were once there

My child will be full of cookies and warm milk and the swell of their belly will be health and strength

May their only empty spaces be filled with gold hooped earrings and the memory of milk teeth

In the summer

I chopped off my hair and threw it from the roof

I thought the birds would weave it into their homes but when I came back there were just

clumps floating through the backyard

Yesterday

I saw a large leg of meat

they shaved it down piece by piece until all that remained was sinew and bone and I wondered if I could ever do that