Muristek
Secreted in my gums, five of my milk teeth from infancy remain, and I have four impacted third molars— wisdom teeth, so-called as they arrive uselessly late, nothing but trouble, when you’ve supposedly the brains of an adult, yet still freaked by thunder. They all have to go—in the hospital, like an operation. Easy enough. Everyone has it done—in and out. Your face swells, discolors a few days. A couple aspirin, then back to the fray. Wheeled to the theater, suddenly bathed in surgical lamps, and under; then back in my room, coming to, foggy, gray forenoon twitching through Venetian blinds, an IV in my arm, the line to the withered bag dangling from its tree. My dad, at the foot of the bed, peers down at me. My mother, in good clothes, holds my hand. Perhaps I am dying—all this gravity. Blinding alabaster, cap to Oxfords, a nurse flashes in, removes the IV, commands, “Let’s get you out of here, but first you have to pee.” A lone bud of blood blooms from the puncture. My father leads me, wobbly, in my scant paisley dress, to the toilet. I lift its hem, try and try. He switches on the sink-tap as he had when I staggered, a wee boy, through nightmare to my parents’ bed, too groggy to shake hell from my head, too petrified to pee. He’d carry me to the bathroom, steady me over the bowl, as we listened to the running faucet divine the well in me. After a spell, like a miracle—the sound of water conjures water—the river rife within us all began to flow.
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