The Space Between

For years, I’ve dreamt about losing my teeth.
Sometimes they all fall out, disintegrate,
like skeeted pigeons,
while other times, one
by one, they dribble out of my mouth.

The dreams remind me of when I was six,
and my parents’ friends invited us to dinner,
their house an indoor playground: orange, shag
lawns; polka-dotted, mushroom candles;
hanging beads as doorways.
We ate barbequed ribs so big,
my dad called them “Brontosaurus-sized”
and made jokes about Fred and Wilma.

I am meeting friends for dinner in a foreign city.
The cab yields to my practiced hand, so I settle
in, anonymous, adventurous,
alone. We glide along a rainy street—
where porches compete and shiny sedans
abut abandoned gloves—
until the driver stops:
Do I go left or right here? Which way? Which way?
I laugh, then ask if I’m being punked,
but he neither smiles nor turns to me,
only jerks his head from left to right.
At that moment, I remember
that no one knows—

I’m with this man, in this cab that lingers
at a darkened intersection, a polite gesture
no other drivers behold.
I see no dogs, no neon,
just shards of water disappearing
into the Potomac’s veneer.

My favorite part was the hickory sauce,
and when I asked for more,
my dad told me to smile.
For almost two weeks, I had wiggled
my tongue against the two, lose ones
on the bottom, yet now they were gone—
digested with corn, gristle, red strands
of cabbage—detained
in the duodenum.
The loss so sudden, I felt cheated—no
proper goodbye nor placement under my pillow—
and scared, but my dad assured me they’d not stay
with me forever—that I’d be fine—
and soon, my tongue flipped around
the newly-vacated space.

Amy Lerman lives with her husband and spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, and she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Broad River Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Ember Chasm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, Prime Number, and other publications.