I Was in the Dentist's Chair When I Got the Call About My Mother

By Sonia Greenfield

                 

An old filling crumbled, root canal

gone bad, but my jaw would not give up

its pearl. The oral surgeon used pliers

to break the molar and forceps

 

to pluck the pieces of what had always

been whole. In tweezers he held up

inflamed tissue glistening red and ghastly

white. He showed me how a dark space

 

beyond opened to my sinus, a little tunnel

to my own obscured skull. He drew blood

and mixed it with bone to pack the empty

socket, and in the morning, I caught

 

my plane. All that week I swallowed pills

against infection, swollen and tender,

a green bruise shadowing my right cheek.

How I had dreaded what had to happen,

 

this unwelcome extraction. In ICU, after

the tubes were removed and every monitor

silenced, I could see her row of bottom teeth

where they peeked from her open mouth.

 

All that impossible week my tongue

wandered to the bundle of sutures poking

from my gum, prodding the absence

where something solid used to be.

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