my friend liz had beautiful teeth and she knew it and she loved them
liz and her teeth moved to new york city in the summer
after a few months she got hit by a car as she crossed the street
no that’s not right she didn’t get hit she got smashed i’m talking
SMACK
flesh against metal moving thirty miles per hour
her body ricocheting off a bumper to skid a bloody smear across asphalt
teeth everywhere
the car keeps driving
doesn’t slow down one bit to look at the body on the road
i was hit by a car once
riding my bike across the street at night in the rain
the crosswalk sign lit up and it told me to go
so i biked across the intersection then
POW
metal bumper slammed my bike’s back wheel
but it’s just my back wheel
a stroke of luck of sheer happenstance a miraculous order of seconds
liz’s body my back wheel what’s the difference
the car slowed down for a moment but then completed his right-hand turn
son of a bitch
the bastards never stop
i skidded out but didn’t even fall over my squishy body still held its shape
didn’t crumple like liz’s
maybe liz felt secure as she crossed the street like she’s done a thousand times
security
a complete illusion
everything is one way and suddenly it all changes and teeth fall out of a broken mouth and clatter on concrete
liz’s body gets smushed and then put in an ambulance
the doctors shove a plastic tube down her throat
one half of her face is crumpled behind puffy swollen purple blue bruised skin
half her face is
NON-EXISTENT
no more eye socket or cheekbone or teeth
oh GOD her teeth
her prized possession
the thing she was most proud of
beautiful straight white rows
liz
loved
her
teeth
and they are gone
scattered on blacktop underneath red yellow and green lights
teeth don’t corrode
the hardest part of the human body
they outlast human corpses for hundreds of years
but liz is alive
she breathes through the tube she eats through the tube and after a long time
she eats and breathes without the tube
doctors rebuild her face and months later she looks the exact same as before
except her teeth
her eyeball is back
her pelvis reconstructed
all the bones rebuilt so that in a year liz trains for a fucking marathon but it’s not like before her back hurts her leg hurts her body hurts from so much titanium
NOT FAIR
somebody else decided she’d hurt for the rest of her life
NOT FAIR
here i am making it about myself
worrying about how to talk to liz
worrying about what questions to ask
worrying about her bionic body
worrying about the guy who ran her over
worrying about my own bike getting hit
and worrying about
me
me
ME
i still have all my teeth in my head
they gave liz a manmade smile since they couldn’t put her real teeth back in
i don’t even know if they found them
they might still be sitting in an intersection where they will stay until a kid walks by one day and picks them up and plays with them before his mom takes them
and throws them in the trash
a stranger’s teeth sunken in the soft asphalt under a summer sun in new york city
not a child’s plaything
or maybe they are stuck in tire tread with other pieces of dusty gravel and pebbles
rolling down a highway in nebraska
or maybe they will just sink all the way underneath the melting blacktop and disappear forever
it doesn’t really matter
who gives a shit
wherever the teeth are they aren’t in liz’s head anymore
the doctors put fake ones in and she looks like herself but still
remember what matters
they aren’t her teeth.