Teeth

Peering down into the girl's mouth is a sliver of fluorescent clarity
clambering over the bump of my bent head, running its fingers over
her gums mottled with gray teeth eaten
by cavities
Broken English, paradoxically efficient, whips me by way of my left ear
as I pass along steel tools to the dentist, stick a sterilized aspirator into the girl's mouth
so that she speaks with a lisp interrupted by the saliva sucker that slurps in exclamation
not quite a hiss but also not quite human
I like to think that my lungs speak the same dialect

¿Cómo te llamas?
María, the girl mumbles around the talkative tube
still rambling urgently against her tongue
A curious quiet stills my brain the only arrangement my face can think of is a smile down at her
¿Cuantos años tienes?
Tengo siete años.

My colon understands siete años it means a lot of split broken things
for María it is not knowing that there are split broken things living in her mouth
and smiling anyway it means not knowing to know or maybe
knowing just enough
and I don't know where to begin to stitch together the cracks in her smile first
because there are so many broken things that don't seem to need fixing
so many girls that don't need saving from themselves
and I am not one of them
Too easily, fluorescent clarity scrubs away my delusions of grandeur as I stand there
broken Spanish crowding me in
with paradoxical efficiency I know a little less and in doing so know more
I forget why I am here
a sickle probe dangling from my fingers and a smile gerrymandering my face
into a peace I can't remember the last time I felt;
I've been in pieces for so long

I think she wants me to tell her that I can fix her but I don't know how to say that
and I don't think I could anyway
not when her perfection is laying in the womb of that shabby lean-back chair
like an egg
I think cracks can't be that bad if it means hatching if it means living
if it means María can go on believing that she is alright
that her mouth is splintered in all the right God-given angles and don't she dare ever think otherwise
I just came to talk to her, see
because my lungs were lonely and longed to travel
so I ended up here, a runaway from home, brokenly speaking and reaching for some familiarity
and coming up with mouthfuls of realizing that I was looking for beauty in putting things back together
but maybe I have no right to do that
maybe I found that pieces can be seven year-old girls who look up to smiling people
without thinking they're about to get eaten
and I am not one of them
so maybe I should tell her that my name isn't really doctora
but cansada preocupada triste
and all the other things I don't know how to say yet
but I don't

I want to tell her that she reminds me of me
a long time ago
but not so long that it couldn't be me again, I suppose
I want to tell her that not flossing wasn't the worst thing that happened
but laughing was the best thing and doing it with friends was better
the bestest thing that ever happened but I wouldn't know how to to say that in Spanish
I'm not sure if there's a word for that
but she probably made one up in the dialect her lungs speak
words soaring out through her ruined teeth, little gray things
like ancient cities scratching the clouds and tourists gasping,

Look. Isn't that something?