At the doctor’s, not the dentist’s

Her gaze fixed straight onto the doctor but her teeth were crooked to the side, as if swept by the wind at some inopportune moment, and frozen into a white fence behind a white forest, or a white forest behind a white fence. The snarl or the growl would be the expressions most suited to show the schisms between the warring canines, the calamitous incisors, the invading gums, that marched on a face that was otherwise long and soft like a pear, and which rested on a frame that was rigid and lanky like a hand pump. But when the baby in her lap tugged at her full-breasted zipper with curled crimson fingers, the smile had revealed the same sight, except now her teeth appeared to be the keys of a broken piano playing by themselves a sweet silent music.

Image courtesy of iStock.com/amygdala_imagery