A THING by RYAN RICHARDSON
Leaving Rehab
Alongside a blast of pollen to the face is the breakthrough horror that if I should ever get well there will no longer be a circling flock of foxy nurses for me to antagonize, that I may never again swat at the moldy tooth dangling from a flittering string of silk that hangs from a stick I stole from the mental health center next door and that the vial clasped to the dandelion stem necklace that she weaved for me will remain forever empty.
And that’s my beef with dentists—when I got my tooth extraction I easily could have licked my pinky, dabbed up the shards, and wrapped it in aluminum foil as a gift for aforementioned foxy nurse (or at least used it for some magick rite, provided that my bunkie would be willing to take the time to teach me how to do such a thing).
Maybe my tooth could have plugged her new moldless gum-hole (the care of which was neglected on account of her bipolar mania) but it’s unlikely that her own chomper doctor would’ve chicken-nuggeted my cola rotted gnasher along with the preallocated cadavers’ lest the memories of the dead throb inside her jaw to my alien heartbeat. It’s a theory, anyways.
She told me a week later that she ate her stitches with a pop tart. I don’t know if that was an accident or not but maybe it’s not too late for me. I’m startling to realize that time is more on my side than I had thought.
Ryan Richardson (he/him) is a musician and writer that drives a black Nissan in and around his native Sacramento, California. You should talk to him at @canonic_duck.