Poem: Milk Tooth

Milk Tooth

Your last tooth nests in tissue paper on the desk.

It observes me, unblinking.

It unnerves me. I don’t know what to do with it.

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It’s been a while since the tooth fairy called.

Remember when you begged to know if she was real?

You cried all night when I told you.

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I don’t know where it’s friends are.

Perhaps they lurk, maggot white, with plans

to sabotage me when I’m looking for a birthday card.

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I could string them into a rosary,

clatter them, listen to their milky chatter

(in absence of yours). I could tell them all

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or fasten them around my neck.

I could build a silver shrine and perform Hail Marys.

_{Originally printed in ‘Where’s the manual? And other thoughts on Parenthood’, 2020}