The look she gave
was one that scared me,
it looked as though she
would eat me up.
But the terror came not
from the bared canines
and pinkish gums,
but from the inevitable
knowledge that she could,
at any moment,
swallow me whole.
Her mouth wasn't some
boundless sea,
or an abyss.
No, nothing about
the soft pink gap
or the off-kilter pearly teeth.
But her brain was positioned
to snap me up
and contort me
like no other.
The photograph of this look
that hung in the corner of the bathroom
mirror for years and years
never lost the feeling.
Each morning with toothbrush
in hand as I closed the medicine
cabinet she was there.
Wild child hair
as we had been tramping
through the summer
forests.
Everyday this photograph
devoured me bite by bite.
I was being eroded,
my whole body crumbling
into the sea.
Her relentless
stare the only constancy
of my life.
Years of flossing
and feeling the life
being taken from me,
in subtle ways from
strange places.
Between my toes
and underneath my knees.
She was stealing hairs
from my head one by one.
I could feel the itch
of phantom bald spots.
The photo was faded
and blurry in three places
where something had been
caught in the wind
or where her hand was caught wavering.
Forever she was this monstrous thing
I loved, captured in her height
of power.
Every inch of her radiated
day-glo green,
down to her dirty toes.
Even when I was elsewhere,
sometimes in the back of a cab
across the bridge into Brooklyn,
sometimes leafing through
ancient library books-
a whiff of verdant moss
and her long fingers
across my back.
Enough to make me shiver.
Enough to make me
close the book in horror
or question the cab driver's
intentions.
A pause in my life
long enough for her
to claw her way into,
to fly through and cast her shadow.
Long enough to gather up a piece
of me and run off again.
Until I stood and brushed
my teeth that night
in front of the monster
I loved.
[Another quick little short prose bit. They come easier these days.]
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