I miss you like a milk tooth.

Days I held you in my mouth,

curled my speech,

and therefore thoughts,

around your ridges,

bit down on you,

tasting life through your buds.

One day you rattled:

a faint kick in the mechanics,

something loose in the bone,

the roots strung out and I couldn’t

help pressing my tongue

to those spots of broken air.

My tongue never could stop finding you.

Nights a microcosmic breeze,

a storm in a dolls’ house,

whistled through the roots.

I clamped my lips shut

so the sound wouldn’t wake you

but it didn’t keep,

and when you grew

loose enough to string up,

I door-slammed you

from my skull,

sending aftershocks

through my cheeks.

When you fell, new air

swelled into the space now free,

my face all blood and light

and I can’t place you back in,

but still I miss that thing

that was once part of me.