Nerve Injections
A man has premonitions of his teeth cracking every time he looks at concrete. Like an invisible pain, he can't feel it but his mouth acts as if he can. He feels his teeth his teeth as one solid plate, his mouth damned with china. He becomes so sick of his teeth screaming that he goes to an unlicensed orthodontist in a seedy quarter and his injected in his mouth with painkillersto numb them. He becomes an addict but denies this to himself and walks around pillowed from the world.
Later, he free-falls on ice. He carries his teeth home in his wallet. He reassembles the cracked ones with tile epoxy on his kitchen table. He puts them in the ice tray in his freezer. For the rest of his life a slathering junkie, he gums hard candy unaware that splinters of kawbreaker are slitting gashes in the sockets in his jaw.
-M. Doughty, From Verses That Hurt
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