The ache.. is from nothing that has happened. The ache is of all the things that haven’t. They take birth with a surge somewhere in the chest, change form into a vision before your eyes..blinding you to what is- at least momentarily… and then change form again and settle back in the chest, this time like a heavy ball or a tightened fist.
You carry it around everywhere all day, this little ball of all-that-never-happened. If you ease your breath enough, it changes forms easily. Last night the tight ball in the chest loosened into a web of ethereal strings and floated out through my half open mouth as I slept deeply.
Little fairies took flights of fancy at the end of each string, and then one of them shaped the string into a lasso and hooked my tooth. Off she wanted to go on her flight of fancy, pulling out my innocent tooth in tow. As she tugged and tugged, I woke up in pain. She looked rather annoyed that she couldn’t simply fly off, and at why the tooth wouldn’t come along easily.
Did you know teeth represent our sense of embeddedness in our present? That’s why you give something teeth to make it real. And here she is, my tooth fairy of a different sort, wanting to pull out my tooth.
“What do you want?” I ask the unorthodox fairy.
“To fulfill your wish of all the things that never happened.”
“And where are you going?”
“To the time, place and setting where they are happening.”
“Why are you insistent on pulling my tooth?”
“To make the things that never happened, real. To give them teeth,” she seemed delighted with her explanation, like there was no further questioning it.
“Why, oh why, won’t you take all of me- intact with all teeth and the rest??”
“It’s too complicated. There are so many parts of you that cannot survive in the realm of the things that never happened.”
“Which parts? Tell me, perhaps I can do something.”
“But that’s the point. We won’t know unless we are there.”
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