I Start Crying After the Dentist Puts Her Finger in My Mouth

I think I’m too lonely to live, or else too stupid.
The startling deliverance of touch; the unnerving pleasure of being filled.
You use a mirror stick to assess the hue of my bones from oblique angles.
I spent a year cutting compasses from maps, taping them to my windows,
wanting everywhere to feel like somewhere, or at least near somewhere.
Now look at me—nowhere at all, your perfect hand on my shoulder, you
cleaving masticated Big Mac from my three-year-old wisdom
teeth with a hissing water pick. Fallacy: one can be clean,

one can stop carrying

pieces of the day prior around in your mouth. I fall for it.
Pausing in the air, your toothpaste-cerulean latex gloves protrude
with your wedding ring. Okay—I’m no good when I hope and
hoping’s all I do. You floss a dead-eyed, slack-jawed mannequin head,
say, Like this. Say whatever you want. I will always return to you,
hygiene bitch, blurry form in the dental chair’s angler-fish light. I’ll do anything
to be stared at curiously from above; I’ll brush my teeth
with red wine vinegar, eat sugar cubes for lunch. I’ll even love.