A teenage boy 

is the fathomless belief

that you could beat a bear in a fistfight.

A twenty-something woman

is the suspicion

that if you do not gnaw on your nails, you will have claws.

A boy is the spacer between two teeth. 

A woman is a stubborn molar, dawdling under gums.

I am holding the pliers, my fingers are stained in red.

And when I was a child I picked raspberries

and held them too hard.

So this shade of nail polish isn’t necessarily new to me.  

And a bleach-bone tooth, foaming with blushing roots 

clatters on the kitchen floor as I think this.

And the hole I pulled it from was anything but shallow.