this one time i was playing video games when i remembered i had teeth back deep in my head, so i felt back there with my finger and thumb and just when i settled on the one buried deepest of all it crumbled like a soggy sweet tart. i pulled my fingers out and there was the tooth, or bits of it, little white specks.

something is happening:

there’s this one philosophy major with bottom teeth that look like they’re ready to crawl out. last semester, i watched another english major’s gums recede, not knowing whether i should speak to them directly. i’d ask if there was anything alive in there. or if they needed help. or I’d just call DSS right then. because somebody has to make the decision.

i remember that stephen king book about the prince in prison, when a toymaker went a little blind because he made a really, really small doll house. if only it was a bargain like that. if only you could write thirty really, really good books if you had thirty really, really nice teeth and didn’t mind selling each one. the problem is you just forget that it isn’t like that at all- you don’t sell them, you just think you can and lose them on the way, or you keep all your natural teeth and do it normally, or you find that government-hidden tooth powder the magical louisiana hobo talked about in on the road and then all your problems- literary, dental- are forever and ever solved amen.

so yes, you forget to take proper care of the teeth you forget you can’t sell for the books which you will, unerringly, also forget about. that sounds like an allegory for something larger than it is. i’ve been wrong in the past.