what would you pay for a whole new body?

would you rather sell your hair or your nails?

would you rather eat a tooth or a callus?

as i write this, my skin is falling off my body -- the parched winter air scrapes away at me like a razor blade. small white flakes rub off on my black sweatpants. a personal snowstorm to match the weather. i have a big blister swelling up on the ball of my foot from walking too much in boots that are too big. i can feel it straining against me; i want to pop it and i probably will. loose hair collects around whatever chair i sit in. my body dusts DC.

i left larger pieces of myself in san francisco. more specifically, an opulent smear of blood and two halves of two different teeth in mission dolores park. over the past year and a half (post-detoothing), I've often wondered about those two halves -- i remember spitting them out into my bleeding hand and thinking they were rocks until i realized, dispassionately, they were my teeth. did i put them down? did i hand them to my ex? did i slide them, slick with blood and spit, into some pocket? i'll never get them back, but i'm more than happy for the city to have them. 2 halves of 2 teeth and some blood is a small price to pay for the jubilation, adventure, and bittersweetness of growing up a little in the most beautiful city on earth.

i'll be getting a new tooth soon (both remaining half-teeth had to be removed, essentially. one root canal and one extraction). i'm a little sad and nervous. i've grown attached to my gappy smile. if you've seen it in real life, it means you're very special to me.

and my denture -- a funny piece of resin embedded with one lifelike spacer tooth, to 1) prevent my other teeth from encroaching on the negative space where my tooth should be, and 2) make me look more normal -- holds so many memories now. it's almost more precious to me than my actual, real teeth. i've glued it together countless times, forgotten it when i'm already halfway to work, thought i lost it, thought i broke it, thought i threw it away... it housed a couple of tooth gems for a while ("it's very shiny" was what my ex said). for the past 7 months, it's been misaligned due to a botched re-gluing. it sticks out several extra millimeters, and i can feel it scrape against my lips whenever i smile. in certain lighting, it looks like it's floating in the air in front of my mouth. a phantom tooth that i'm chasing. whenever i catch it looking like that, i feel desperate and upset. and then i feel silly for caring so much.