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How Do I Look?
By
Erek Smith, May 15, 2009
I stared in the mirror.
Her words rattled inside my head.
“You have bad teeth.”
I tightened the grip of the cold pliers. I felt the chill of metal against bone in the bottom of my stomach. I
locked my fingers together around the handles and pulled. A tear slid down my cheek. I kept pulling until the
pliers flew out of my mouth with a tooth in its claws. The pliers hit the mirror and created a crack the length
of the mirror. I put both hands on the countertop and paused to catch my breath. My heart raced. Blood dripped
from my mouth and dotted the sink. I looked at the side of the mirror where there was no crack. My teeth were
still crooked.
I heard her voice.
“You have bad teeth.”
I picked up the pliers from the sink. I chose a tooth from the opposite side, for evenness. Again I grabbed the
pliers with a two-handed grip and pulled. This one put up more of a fight than the first. I had to stop and
restart several times. After a few minutes I ripped the root from the gums. The tooth fell in the sink and rolled
around in the blood. I took a swig from a cup of saltwater I had set next to the sink. I swished the saltwater
around in my mouth. My eyes watered. Tears fell into the sink with the blood and teeth. I spit in the sink and
grinned at the mirror.
“You have bad teeth.”
I moved my aim to the top row. I picked the biggest tooth I could find. I planted my feet and pulled. It didn’t
budge. I pulled. Again it didn’t move. I pulled a third time. The pliers slipped off the tooth and slammed into
the counter. I regained my stance and gripped the tooth harder than ever. I pulled a fourth time. The tooth
didn’t come out. Instead, it cracked and half the tooth fell in the sink. The other half remained rooted in my
jaw. I rinsed with saltwater.
“You have bad teeth.”
My smile didn’t look any better than when I started. It wasn’t the teeth that was the problem, it was the jaw. It
was too small and caused my teeth to collide. I dropped the pliers on the ground. I grabbed both sides of my
bottom jaw with my hands. I pulled outward with both. Nothing seemed to happen. I kept pulling. I stopped because
my fingers started to cramp. After relaxing them for a second, I went back to pulling. I planted my feet. I
pulled harder.
I heard a snapping sound, like the crack of a baseball bat. I felt a sharp pain under my tongue. I released the
grip. I tried to look at myself in the mirror. The reflection was too blurry. Everything was blurry. The room
spun.
I felt light. The colorful haze that precedes dreams filled the air. The room turned a heavenly white.
And then, black.
Erek Smith is a poet primarily, and a short story writer occasionally, from Alabama. You can find his
published works and information at ereksmith.blogspot.com.
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