Zipper

The woman I love
tends not to floss
and has what she calls
“European teeth,” virginal
to orthodontics. I love them
for how they snag her upper lip
at lunch, or mine
when we are really
going at it. “Maybe
I should have gotten braces
during the pandemic,”
she says while I scrape
my tongue idiotically
in the mirror. “But then I would have
had braces when I met you.”
Her dentist nags her about it,
she explains in what I call
her pan-European accent,
but she likes her rakish teeth
the way they are. And what else
about her, anyway,
is straight? I floss so much
and hard I can breathe
through my teeth, a tic that makes
an insectile sound.
She has been told that half
her molars will grind down
before the others
and make eating difficult
in later years.
“But then, I probably
won’t live that long,” she says
through mentholated foam,
and her hand travels
to the long pale seam where once
they took her heart out
to replace a broken valve.