KING

There are teeth with antlers, but the stars are no longer there. Their indecision in the far reaches, their difficulty across the long dark, their light is a trace of what was once was possible but is silent and no longer.

There was a path to the orthodontist’s but the ever-straightening gnawing of years have made me forget and I find myself in the darkening forest where every direction is the same.

I know the deer surround me, but, like spent stars, they are invisible. Their branches mime antlers, their pelts the barks of warm-blooded trees. Like certainty, they hide from me and say nothing.

The forest is a sentence with no end; only the punctuation of the turning path, the steady breathing of the sky.

I remove my teeth & the antlers grow. Each tooth shining like a torch between thumb and finger as it leaves the gum.

In the night sky, the teeth are a crown, a constellation of birds, the white deer of speech.

I am unknown on the other side of the world. I have become king.