i’m trying to meditate

while he slices his way into my gums,

saws the tooth into quarters, and yanks the pieces out of my jaw.

i read somewhere the body breaks down codeine and turns only 20% of it into morphine

(a pelagic euphoria muted into a dreamy river of warm).

in a similar way humans are inefficient machines converting time into pleasure,

but are overefficient at converting time into meaning.

every image starts a sequence,

every sequence hatches narrative,

every narrative spines a life.

i want to get better at holding single images inside of my head,

because not every moment is the start

of something else

or the slick wet promise

of something more.
all this to say, half my face is numb, my clouded head makes no sense of it,

and now they’ve thrown away the shards of tooth

i secretly wanted to keep.