An Ode upon Second Molar No. 32, on the Occasion of Its Onlay

Three score and a dozen more years I have suffered to pass, but passed without suffering, at least none to speak of. A whole inventory I have been, a warehousing of original parts in varying states of wear, reputably won (mostly) and worn... not proudly I will say exactly, but without flinch nor diversion neither. The gray is mine, the crags are me and each snapping joint is an announcement of us all together: one. Un-inked, un-branded, un-marked, un-remarkable. Whole, appendix to zygoma and everything in between and above, behind and below.

But lo! Mesdames et messieurs, the things I've endured in this last little blur of time that's occurred are trials unheard of by action or word! Well, by me, anyroad. The most likely of circumstances is that this has happened either to you, the person (known or unknown to you) sitting closest to you as you read this or together both, though likely serially and not in installation accounting for prohibitive awkwardness in medical address and seating comfort. As common as dandelions or childbirth it is, but as any dew-eyed botanist or new mother will tell you: commonalty and uniquity are not excluders, one of the other. The crowd is for measuring, but the human soul is for living, for savoring, for consuming and enduring.

I sit and I type, the pen relegated to a metaphor created and of creation. I am fingertips and pixels as I bare to you, one human upon another, singularity to singularity: I've had a partial crown.

I am coronal, but un-halo-ed. I am more jester than monarch, surmounted with a hat both ill-fitting and air-tight, a non-prince, a dull half-moon, a ruler of nothing.

I'm talking about my teeth. Just one of my teeth. I hope that was clear. I paid a very nice Seventh Day Adventist man, with steady hands unshaken by red meat or the demon drink, to hack away part of one of my teeth and just throw it away like it was nothing, only to replace it with a hunk of custom-fitted space-resin.

Anyway, I'm not used to losing things. I always put my keys in the same decorative glass bowl every day, for example, and my shoes are in one of two places, both in line with my egress from bedroom to garage each and every day. And now, somewhere, in a plastic baggy marked "medical waste" sits about a quarter of my back right molar, a unique piece of my biology, cooked up and extruded into being by other parts of my biology, to be thrown away like something yucky, never to be replaced.

Except by the custom medical-grade porcelain onlay. It was actually literally replaced by that. But I shall never forget its feel, its comforting, natural touch against my tongue sometimes (usually by accident) as it is the first time any part of my body has been.. um...

Wait, no, scratch that: I had four wisdom teeth out already. And dang, that was yonks ago. Absolute yonks. Also they knocked me out during the procedure and then gave me opiates for the recovery. No wonder I forgot.

BUT NOT THIS ONE, NO! I will do the opposite of forget you, Fragment of One of My Teeth. You were knitted by this body and thus will always be Of It, a vestigial potential harbor for cavities I will now never have there.

Also it's sensitive back there now when I drink cold things. So that will help me remember too.

Adieu.