Maybe my instruments are sharper than you. They whirr and coo, pick and prick, solo or mirrored; that small round window reveals worlds. We make an itch, something raw, a wire to your brain, pain. Wiggle. My instruments are disturbed; something, a wiggle. We are probing,

drowned in saliva, halitosis, chipping at tartar, scraping off plaque, trying to ignore that wiggle. Here and there, a molar, now a canine, they vibrate, and not with the drill. Their frequency is piquantly naive, isolated, a hermit's frequency. You are looking at me with some

eyes, I don't know which. I am not digging, I am only polishing and cleaning, but there's that wiggle again, much stronger, mouthquakes. My instruments retreat as the white statuesque teeth slowly work their way out of their sockets. Your gums recede, some eyes scream. The

teeth tumble now, down the saliva-coated bib, silent, no rattling, not gleaming in the harsh light of the pull-down lamp. They seem softer, fragile. They begin to unravel, to split open, only slowly. Light dims in all eyes, but before dark, a flash of color: the flight of thirty-two

butterflies.