Loose Change & Molars
____________________________________

              Because I don’t want
Lucy at seven years old to know that I am the tooth fairy,
              I turn away

from her when I empty the coin purse into my palm
              to scrounge
enough money to buy her an ice cream

              cone with jimmies.
I hold in my hand the silver and copper coins and four
              of her teeth—

two molars, an incisor, and a canine—that I couldn’t bring
              myself to throw
away, but put in my purse for safekeeping on those nights

              I tiptoed into
her room, reached under the pillow, chanted my abracadabras,
              and changed her teeth

to cold cash. Now, counting out my last dimes
              and nickels,
I wonder how much these four teeth will buy. Shall I open

              in her name a bank account
with them as my initial deposit, or use them as the down payment
              on a house

that’s not yet built? Her small tongue wiggled them
              loose. They ached
to their roots. Like Eve, she bit into a green apple, and they fell

              out. One day
they and their secret pain will be all that’s left of her childhood, and I will
              count them over

and over, millionaire of these hours compounded daily.
              She smiles
her gappy smile. I have enough change to buy her

              a mocha chip
double-dip with rainbow jimmies in a sugar cone. She curves
              her pink tongue

around its scooped, sculpted coolness. “Do you want a lick?”
              “Sure,” I say.
I taste the cold sweetness of our long summer days together.

              The loose change
and teeth rattle in my coin purse like the wildflower seeds
              in their paper packet,

which my daughter and I broadcast across our backyard.
              Shall I plant her molars
in the black soil? By the time they flower, my daughter will be grown and gone.

 

 

From Dirt Angels by Donald Platt, 2009

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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