Another june poem!

Extraction

It is a well-known fact that wisdom tooth removal is best completed between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. There are three reasons for this. The first: probability of impaction. The second: probability of infection. The third, a combination of the two: hoards of tiny fairies, gnawing at sprays of raw tissue and a forest of pink mouth stalactites, will hungrily spill towards freedom.

Their servitude—dousing pliable young minds with piles and plentitudes of wonderings, strange nightmares, the stuff within blinks—somberly comes to an end as the molars reveal themselves.

The how of it: the enamel begins to slacken just so at seventeen. The inner tooth begin to dance and shake with tiny spots of light. The quiet intrusion of these pore-sized glimmers is a shocking acupuncture between real and real. At first, the fairies are wide-eyed, confused. They slow the pace of shoveling reverie to sinus, curious at the incursion, sugarplum droop to their wings as anxious fingers pry pulp from prison wall for a better view of what might be.

As the layer between pixie and person thins, their ambition becomes less concentrated. Startling windows widening, time scratching at the pale panes, the daydreams begin to oxidize. Ambitions once thick with intent, muscular with a whimsical academy taught only in dreaming, atrophy. Their nests dew with dust. The fairies stumble toward a caustic light, squinting at parades of birthdays and funerals stubbornly marching past.

If left untreated, the pain of this process will grow insufferable. The harsh feathers of fairies can snatch and slash all skin to shreds. They will push out and beyond in search of freckle-sized flight with no recollection of the delicate universes they once cultivated. They are very cruel.

The wisdom tooth whines softly as it is pulled away; a barren thing no one is encouraged to keep under a pillow.  It is a closed museum, demolished on the petal of the tongue—once a pinhead atlas for the imagination’s inarticulate souvenirs. It is the most beautiful place: the crux of the human root.