As a child, I lost two halves of a mouth.
A shucked space where the tub wrecked one summer night,
replaced my front teeth with a void
that soon forgot which loss it mapped.
Rice-like they dallied then sunk.
In the meat-red spit, the soap circled.
My mother, sand-quick & running for the car; my father still fishing
in the lukewarm water—this, the last year of a marriage.
All night my small mouth raked without its razor tines.
I do not remember this or my father weeping afterwards in the tender field,
pea picking in the star-sprouted evening,
life's extractions piled green & sea-surrounding.
Later that night, a strange wind off-hitched every pod and downed.
By morning, only muscle scars where the fruit once hinged.
