Smile

It is 1:30 pm and
I just brushed my teeth
for the third time today.
I have this obsession.
With my teeth.
When they don’t feel clean,
It is impossible
for me
to think about anything else.
I buy my toothbrushes in bulk.
I keep extras at my friends’ houses.
Just in case.
When I can’t brush after lunch,
I cannot concentrate in class,
all I can do is run my tongue
along my incisors
over and over,
for hours.
Cringing at their
grimy, plaquey texture.

My father has had dentures for thirty-nine years.
He says
they pulled his teeth out
one by one
with an old pair of pliers.
He says
it wasn’t the beer stains,
it wasn’t the rotting
brought on by all those cigarettes he used to puff.
He says
it was because he never
brushed his teeth enough,
especially before he went to bed.
When I was seven,
he told me
if I ever went to bed
without brushing,
the plaque would swim through my mouth,
grind away the enamel on my molars,
eat their way through my gums.
Take away my little white smile
while I slept.
He reached into his mouth, pulled out his
top row of teeth.
He held up what, in his mouth, had been a
perfect set of pearly whites.
But sitting there in his hand,
upside-down,
dripping with saliva and spit,
they were nothing but the
porcelain pickets of a freshly-painted fence.
He smiled at me without those teeth and he sighed.
Is this the kind of mouth you want?
I shook my head.
I knew he was referring to the mouth on his face,
but I could not take my eyes off of the one in his hand.
It’s jagged little pickets were smiling at me too.

Sixteen years later,
and I still can’t look away.
I cannot recall a single night since I was seven
when I have not brushed my teeth before going to bed.
But sometimes, in the middle of the day,
when I try to take a nap,
I will lie awake in bed,
my eyes closed, unable to sleep.
I see that hand,
The pearls, the picket fence
sitting there in my father’s palm.
Smiling, laughing, chattering away at me.
Mouthing the words.
Telling me I had better not fall asleep
without brushing,
because if I do, those plaques will come
and they will devour my mouth.
If I do, I will wake up an hour later with
yellow teeth.
Gums full of holes.
A rotten mouth.
A smile like my father’s.