2001-03-13 || 2:01 pm, thank you.

|| gap tooth lady walkin down the street. you're the kind of lady i would like to meet. ||

the space in between my two front teeth is coming back. yep. it is. two years of braces and trips to and from the doctor and pink retainers resting in an orange plastic case at the bottom of my favorite red carry-on case

(red carry-on case: cemetery of unmentionables. empty tampon boxes. empty prescription bottles. silver pallettes of immodium ad and tylenol cold. pieces of fabric i have been meaning to sew together for a quilt ((gad. remember when i used to do that sort of thing? rip up old dresses and make blankets in the middle of the night? sheesh.))case of birth control pills, 22 of the 28 still smiling sweetly in that benign flintstone vitamin way, still with my things as a personal reminder of the lunacy i went through in 1997. lunacy. severe depression. funny tingling in my hands and bad bad dreams. weight gain pulling my body out places that made me not recognize myself in the mirror.)

and it's back. just slightly. letting gravity (?) work its magic, genetics work its magic (dad has the same thing. dad had braces to get rid of his space too, although where my motive was i wanted to smile open-mouthed unselfconsciously, dad's was to get out of going to vietnam. you don't have to go to vietnam if you have orthodontia. and canada was too far away. and dad's space has come back, triumphantly, in the same exact way mine is.).

i'm not sure how to proceed. i brush my teeth and stare at it. i feel seeds beginning to get caught there when i am eating. i think of elementary school pictures, almost all of them, where i have this raggedy closed mouth smile on my face so that the space didn't show.

but now i kind of like it.

but at night after i brush my teeth i still try to pinch the two teeth together.

the retainers won't even fit in my mouth anymore.

teeth are moving moving shifting in the night, slow like barges. like techtonic plates. fulfilling their destinies, i guess. a tribute to my dad and his goddamned good-for-nothing genes.

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