Cavities

At this particular moment I believe that perhaps the fatal difference between real life and artistic representation is thus: In real life, struggle is agonizing and draining and ugly. But life spawns art. And in art, struggle is still painful, perhaps more so, yet emotionally cathartic and moving--therefore beautiful.

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Cavities

After putting the goggles on, I become like
an obedient young scientist awaiting dissection—
the eye of a cow or worse, cat carcasses, trembling with tools in hand and
avoiding her lab partner’s confident gaze

instead it is she who does the science
to me, it seemed more like destruction
drills whirling in the deep cave shaving off pieces (you never
know when you're strapped to the chair and gaping like a fish)
then construction, the molding of pearly gates in darkness
and the wads of cotton lay passively under all this
to soak it all up

she tells me to think of distractions when I’m
squirming because the cotton has slid from
under my tongue when I think too much of
silence and numbness and the tools spitting out water light and air

after it is all over I run my tongue across the geography
of everything to make sure what I can’t feel still exists
despite the numbness and the persistent feeling that the flesh that was
once so familiar was not, and has never been mine.

-from a half drugged and numb Heidi after a trip to the dentist for fillings