in between my teeth

In my sleep I speak out loud “He’s been daughtering his hands - they’re too soft for hot water.”
In the morning I read out loud a headline from the newspaper “Fangs and Feathers in Rare Fossil”
In the streets I call to people their names but they cannot hear me, their ears numbed by the sounds of civil and concrete.
In the night, I am quieted by ghosts in screens who tell me
not to speak or to think, not to think or to speak, not to speak,
but to buy and marry.
I floss and brush and rinse for it.
It’s on the top of my tongue,
(right where meat meets molars)
I’ve been looking even in between my teeth tonight.
For solace.
Mother writes me letters – she says, “ It’s in your bones.”
So I stretch and shake and peel back layers of pages of skins, of wishes for memories of sins.
What did I commit?
All I find are apples and ribs.
I seek the oceans for it (phosphorescent) and dredge up only old Spanish galleons, constitutions, stirrups and saddles. I find cowboys and ovens. I find suit coats and diamonds.
I’ve been told -
This country wears her hair long and braided. She wears an apron and spits on skillets, banging a triangle she calls for us all to come home.
In this earth there is nothing to find but the bones of soldiers and once erected stones.
I want my body back but it sits in cages and waits tables in diners.
So I reach down to put my hands between my legs and find shopping malls, I find legs crossed patiently, I find a fragile disposition.
I find wet and wanting skin.
I find dry and beaten skin.
In between teeth and the concave of space of living and the air that doesn’t feel like anything. In between the words that describe me and your understanding of them. In between the minutes that slip so quickly through the space between my fingers. In between my skin and your skin. In between the walls of my body, and the bubbles and holes of ozone, in between each breath. In between now… and now… and then.
This is where I live.