Wheeler Light

Teeth

In a dream, all my teeth fall out. In another,
my teeth shatter. When I am not dreaming,
I bite my bottom lip when I get angry.

My brother used to say it would telegraph
my punches and that is why he would
always win our fights. In reality, he would
win because he was a better fighter.

He would never celebrate the wins,
he would just win and get sad about it
later. We were always fighting. I was always
scared I would lose. Now that I have adult
teeth, whenever one is a little loose,
I am afraid that I will be alone when I die.

I have a retirement fund which my friends
think is useless with the apocalypse on
the horizon. I wake up and make muesli
and an unsoaked oat gets lodged between
two molars. It is so important to look forward
to something even when living in the present.

Everyone who is alive right now has had
the dream where their teeth fall out.

That’s not a verifiable statistic. I don’t have
source or proof of it. I have a retirement fund
because I’m scared that if the apocalypse
doesn’t come, I will have to deal with the fallout
of being old with a body that doesn’t work.

The dreams about the teeth mean the same thing
despite containing different ways to break.

I am not afraid of being afraid of you anymore.

In a dream, I killed myself over and over
in an alleyway. The alleyway filled with my body
until it couldn’t contain my body. Then I woke up.

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Wheeler Light currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Hobart, New Delta Review, Pretty Owl Poetry and December Magazine, among others. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2018) and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk 2019).