The Other Night

The other night I dreamed that my teeth were falling out,

and I did not wake up.

During the waking state,

I walked with my gums exposed, inflamed,

trying out words that could no longer hold themselves.

Under the sickly light of the green bathroom, my reflection took on

an almost clinical precision: the open gums,

irregular, pulsing with an alien vitality,

as if they did not entirely belong to me.

The bathroom was lit with a light

from an old hospital, of tiles that keep

secrets no one ever fully cleans away.

I entered without urgency, like someone

following an inevitable protocol.

I opened my mouth in front of the mirror.

My reflection in the blood was not exactly mine:

there was something displaced in the gaze,

a technical coldness, almost forensic,

as if I myself were assessing the deterioration

with a professional distance.

The teeth gathered in the sink

looked like archival pieces,

evidence of an intimate autopsy.

I tried to count them.

Not out of hope, but method.

But every time I reached a number,

another fell,

another gave way,

another came loose with that faint sound

that exists only in dreams

and in bodies that no longer defend themselves.

And then,

I stopped counting.

Not out of fatigue,

but because the number

had ceased to mean anything.

Loss required no measure,

no order,

no record.

They kept falling,

with a strange obedience,

as if they responded

to a logic prior to pain.

As if it had already been decided

long before

I opened my mouth.

I tried to close my jaw,

to stop the process,

to interrupt that silent mechanism;

but something remained open,

insistent,

beyond my control.

And I understood

that it was not a falling,

but a form of revelation.

Photography by Frank Scaramuzzo