What I Did On My Lunch Break

Dentist came in slinking, low and sneezy. I've been talking to your teeth. That's what she said, I think like I'm pretty sure. So okay? Your teeth are good. Very good. No decay, or, other bad things of any descrip', it's all sweet without the bad sweet. No cavities. Nothing else. I looked at the whiteness and it shone, it shone like gold. Smooth and supple. I leaned in close and the mirror reflected only perfection. Like, honest. The saliva glistened. Alive. The calcium was so firm and solid, the structure so perfect, the balance! Oh lord the balance was sacred. Like geometry of pyramids, or crop circles or broken angels tinkling into a whiskey bottle. Oh it was delicious. Your teeth are awesome. Seriously, I love them. I think about them at night. I lie there in the dark, and there's something that feels so right. I curl up under the blanket and I'm going to recommend no change to your current dental regimen. Perfection is. Don't worry about it, yeah. Your teeth are awesome.

Okay'm, I said. No fillings then.

No way man, said dentist. I lifted her fingers out of my mouth and collapsed next to the chair. That's okay, I was sleepy anyway. The next morning I caught my teeth writing a farewell letter, or it might have been a suicide note – I didn't read it more than once. I tossed it into the fire and showed my teeth the back of my hand. How dare you! I said. It was a rhetorical question. If you wrote it down, you wouldn't even put a question mark at the end. My teeth started weeping. I found them hiding in the attic later that night. It was pretty dark, but I'm pretty sure that's who it was. They seemed kind of busy, so I decided not to disturb them.

The next day, the dentist was back in my mouth again. I tried to remove her fingers but it wasn't as easy this time. There were more of them, so it took longer. So maybe it wasn't less easy, it was just more, like time-consuming? Whatever. Totally sick of the dentist. I told her, seriously, I'm pretty sure this consultation was over a short while ago. But she was all like yeah but, housecalls and chalk dissolving in milk and there's teeth cancer going around, kids want the pox but the sick shop was all out so they gave them the teeth cancer instead. At a discount, though? I went to the shop but then my lunch break was over so I had to stop