tuckova

This happened after I ate all my teeth, maybe even the same night. Running my tongue across the new smoothness, salt and blood. How quickly I could destroy things simply by not paying attention. Driving around all night, coming at the sunrise from that side. This was the summer everything was on the other side of the glass from me, not a bell jar but more often a car windshield, cracked, covered in dead bugs and the half moon smears of windshield wipers and the last few desperate drops of blue fluid. Everything hurt me and nothing touched me. This was the year you came through the door and sang children's songs to me and I fell in love and rubbed ice into my hands until they were raw and senseless. I practiced not reacting, though I would blink to show I could understand. And so that night, or that morning with the sun coming up and my teeth gone and you ran your hand over the scar on my leg and said you'd like to know me. I don't think anybody knew me before that. I'm not sure anybody's known me since. You came close. Anyway that's what I remember, that moment nestled in a night, in a summer, in a year when I thought somebody might really want to know.