Your Tooth Fairy Apologizes
I never showed you where I kept your baby teeth
In a small silver vial
Topped by a golden-winged fairy
Who extends a tiny star-tipped wand
Entire vessel just 2-1/4” tall from base to fairy bun
I hid her in my bedroom on a high closet shelf
In a lidded box filled with fancy, rarely worn lingerie
Concealed in a tangle of lace-trimmed slips, camisoles, petti pants, tap shorts
And silk scarves
It might have crossed my mind to show you her
When you were a teen or so
But you weren’t the kind of kid who’d be enchanted
You’d just scoff and be embarrassed
In your 20s you may have marveled and been charmed
Perhaps given it a primary-tooth-rattling shake
But by then you were off working and traveling
Between life-threatening bouts of acute disease
And at the end, when you came home to hospice in your childhood room
This treasured reliquary filled with your precious baby teeth
Might just have been a god-damned reminder of
The six fucking adult teeth doctors cut out of your left jaw
In excruciating surgery and radiation for secondary cancer there
Randi Rohde
(To Ian)
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This poem absolutely knocked me out. So beautiful and powerful. Felt sucker-punched in the very best way!
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Dianne! (Did you happen to feel the sucker punch in your jaw?)
Wow, these lines are so hard and yet so soft and so very sad.
Mickey, Yes, soft and hard—like deep love and wrenching loss. Thank you so much for your comment!
If I had had daughters, I would have showed this poem to them. I think they would have delighted in the subtle nuances of it.
You speak of childhood, but that time for me was an unhappy one. My upbringing was dysfunctional, not functional. My parents too wounded, and then throughout my childhood, I was wounded too. Although, now I know it didn’t have to be that way. My parents were educationalists in a former life, but they were also healers and teachers.
Now I mentor others, and in mentoring others, I heal myself.
This is what the writing and reading of poetry does for me, it is not just a personal attack on my senses, that lands me in the golden field of sobriety, it also heals me, and frees me from the delusional sensibilities and paranoia and grandeur of my mother.
Thank you Abigail,
Your comment about delighting “in the subtle nuances” of this poem is lovely. How good that poetry heals and frees you!
My best to you!