Death Eater with a Dead Tooth: Front & Center

*cw: self-harm talk, referencing familial trauma, & lots of feels that can be intense in this poem.

my roots are tangled & curved
complicated & dangerous
this is how i feel when
dentist after dentist says
i don’t do those kinds of root canals

15 is wreaking havoc on my life today
mouth wide
hands in
i hear them say 15 
& am immediately transported to 15

quadrant by quadrant, my back teeth are falling ill
about a month before the pain slipped through
i shared a dream with two of my friends
prompted by a card i drew from my tarot deck
it was about teeth
my dream was about crumble
the sun burned my friend
i hoped i was wrong

front right center i am dead
i fell out of the car one evening
& broke my teeth more than in half

it was evening, & we were driving back from
visiting my mom on her break
the lamps along side the railroad track 
shone matching sunset orange
& i wasn’t wearing a seatbelt as i fought
for the last taco with one of my sisters,
the youngest of whom was next to me

i assume the pothole that slowed us down was also
the culprit
all i remember was arguing & then 
my body wrapping itself around my sister & then
air wrapping itself around us & then
lifting myself up off the gravel &
knowing immediately that
my teeth were gone

i always wondered if we’d have found them if we had looked

that was the same time i became my mother’s mother
bore witness to the remains of her childhood,
collected her whimpers & the questions that hung like muscle
& tucked them into her peach blanket
sang her the saddest song on the radio from memory

that was the same time that i began to pull out my hair
& when i found the name
:trichotillomania 
in my mother’s DSM IV
five years later
i let out a five-year-old sigh

my bald spots made the shame worse,
made my mother angry,
& i never had answers for the
found sandwich bags of hair 
i would collect from the floor

at this same time, my self-hate began
to solidify a presence in my small brown body
desperately urging me to scratch my skin
til blood came to surface
this is what i did the night 
i didn’t have the nerve to run away

my mom took my teal & pink backpack, 
with all the zippered pockets, into the bathroom
& i pressed my face to the carpet & watched her feet
listened to her cry as she rummaged through the pockets
of things i don’t remember 
except for the this:
the photo booth picture of her & i
black & white
she still in braces
my pigtails small & a top my baby faced head
both of smiling