"My Mother's Teeth."
So my mother had dentures.
And I tell the story all the time
because I think it's interesting.
I don't know, maybe I'm the only one
that thinks it's interesting.
But I, growing up, used to see little cups,
glass cups of dentures floating around in soaking.
And for my entire childhood and adulthood,
I thought there was just one set of dentures.
That is not true.
There are many sets.
So I found them and I wrote a poem about them.
My Mother's Teeth died twice, once in 1965, all
pulled out from gum disease.
Once again on August 3, 2015.
The fake teeth sit in a box in the garage.
When she died, I touched them, smelled them,
thought I heard a whimper.
I shoved the teeth into my mouth,
but having two sets of teeth only made me hungrier.
When my mother died, I saw myself
in the mirror, her words in a ring around my mouth
like powder from a donut.
Her last words were in English.
She asked for a Sprite.
I wonder whether her last thought was in Chinese.
I wonder what her last thought was.
I used to think that a dead person's words die with them.
Now I know that they scatter, looking for meaning
to attach to, like a scent.
My mother used to collect orange blossoms
in a small shallow bowl.
I pass the tree each spring.
I always knew that grief was something I could smell,
but I didn't know that it's not actually a noun, but a verb,
that it moves.