I am afraid of dentists, and other things I have learned this month

1. My dentist calls me lobster

He says that I have beautiful gums

And gathers the nurses around to stare into my mouth.

He tells me that they hold onto my teeth in the most beautiful way.

I tell him I do that with everything.

2. Some days, I carry the world on my back

At night, you can hear the creak and turn of planets as I roll over

I wake with Jupiter embedded in my back,

Saturn’s rings curled around my spine

Only then do you call me beautiful

3. There are some people that even when they speak, it sounds like poetry.

He says that he wants to feel human again

But that he drank too much scotch last night

And woke up three stops too late

On the train line to the mountains

Now he numbers his stops, becoming a tourist in his own city.

4. They say at the end of the world silence will fall

But something makes me think that it will rise

Up through the centre of the earth, creeping through the veins of the trees until One morning sound no longer exists

But everything smells a thousand times better.

5. People with synaesthesia tell me that they associate smells with words

I want to know what the word ‘himalaya’ smells like,

If they see colours in sounds

And whether it helps them understand more of the world

Or less

But you can never tell me.

6. We play a game, which nut each person is

We categorise each person we know

“This one is a hazelnut. No, a pecan”

“She’s a total macadamia.”

And in this way, walnuts become sacred, peanuts coarse, pine nuts cheery

Personifying each one to understand more of the humans we surround ourselves with.

7. I am the Atlantic ocean. The moon. A fox. The galaxy NGC4826. A wildling.

I wonder if my categorisation of these things tells me more about myself

Than the things I become

Or if it gives me licence to become them

But I can never figure it out, so I number all the things I become

Becoming a tourist in my own skin

And I wonder if you find it beautiful