Jeremy Schmidt
With us you took your time.
You pulled back our lips and tapped
the gums methodically with your metal, testing
where the pinkish gray might give.
At your prodding our teeth bloodlessly
emptied themselves from their sockets: one by one
into the vaporous white of your palms.
Unhurried, as if ours were the only bodies
you placed each tooth silently back
inside the narrow stitched leather bag
from which you'd given it years ago
as if gathering out of dry sand
the flesh-flecked pits of cherries
bleached from sight by a merciless sun.