It started with some bad breath.

Then I lost a tooth, or so I thought, as the boney marble popped up my throat. It fell from my tongue— clinging to my bottom lip, before falling into my palm for inspection.

The leathery woman on the next barstool at Cooter Brown’s leaned in, her whisper cold through chewing ice, “tonsil stone, love. Get’m all the time.”

Hot as it was, I always passed on ice.

It’s exasperating. Drinking and drinking and not getting drunk.

 

I woke up with F&M’s cheese fries dumped upside down on my lap. Cheddar and bacon bits defied gravity, mushrooming up through negative space of waffle fries.

The felony DUI counted as strikes two and three to my boss, following her discovery of my secret mid-shift mouthwash cocktails.

Tallying Bitch. 

 

The second was the size of a wasabi pea. It tasted of Southern Comfort and sick and popped out when wiping some Crest into the ravines of my tongue. I hoped that we could do it again.

I like it in the mornings— better than Pepsi or fried eggs to get the poison out.

She (was it Stephanie?) had invited me back to her place when Snake and Jake’s closed at 7 am.

I kissed her sweaty forehead. I tried not to take it personally, when, upon seeing my face, she cried about how she doesn’t know “why she keeps doing this,” and asked me “what the hell was wrong” with her?

I assumed these were rhetorical questions as I slowly gathered my clothes off the laminate dorm room floor.

The walk home down Broadway gave me a sunburn. My head a fat satsuma.

 

Dave from Crescent Group offered me a lift to the dentist.

In late October, the Black Pearl smells smoky: tea lights toasting the inside of pumpkins.

School had started, but financial aid hadn’t come from Worcester. My folks were drowning. But all we’d ever been taught is how to want more.

I locked up my basement room. Keychain has more bottle openers than keys.

 

‘You have to wash out the crypt,’ said the dentist.

The crypt?

“The hole in my throat is called a crypt?”

“Gargle some water every day when you’re in the shower.”

Like I showered every day.

Still, she was thinking about me in the shower.

 

“How did it go?” asked Dave, handing me a Pepsi.

“It’s called a tonsillolith.” I told him.

He furrowed his brow. “Tonsil-lolith? Sounds like the name of some ancient demon.”

An ancient demon who needs feeding. I pictured myself inside its cool, wet, jaws — carbonated with a twist of lemon.

Feeding begets feeding. When full, it pops out, empty again.

 

We pass the Carrollton cemetery with its above ground tombs. Built so in heavy rains, they don’t pop up again —stay dry in their crypts, at street level, where the living walk.

Dave hands me a Pepsi.

Nice to think how you can be dead and still have a home in a little village.