He’d quit at it so long ago that it’d almost been the beginning, age seven, not even a person. Almost as though he’d never started, and it felt that way now – like he’d never started. His hands shook because he knew there would be blood. Blood was to be expected. Blood like from an operation, not buckets but drops soaked into gauze, not all the way red but orangey at its edges on the gauze and thin as hot oil. His hands shook. And his jaw hurt, already, from stretching open that way, at such a forgotten angle, rearing to clamp.
He fit the twine into the dark spot between his front teeth, snuck it up into the gum, slipped it to and fro. He winced. With your face already contorted and reared back and spread, you can only see yourself wince in your eyes, which quake and howl. You can’t see yourself bleeding; you taste it. He pulled out the twine and spat into the sink. He reinserted the twine. He worked his way down the top row of teeth, slowly, casually, each tooth further removed from the first a greater obstacle than the last, more blood, a pervasive soreness throughout the mouth, harder to wedge the cut up piece of dental floss up into those long-neglected crevices. He was crying softly. At forty. Am I crying? He wondered. Will this be the start of it? I’ve had so much to cry about, so very much to cry about, and it’s never come. And now I’m crying because of sore gums and the sight of a little blood spat in the sink. Still, I’d prefer pain to soreness.
Will this be the start of it? Am I crying?
He got hot, then, that he was crying, hot at this rebuilding process with its simple-sounding first-step that hurt to the touch. It gets better, he knew. Two weeks from now there would be no blood, and the teeth would feel good and strong, and the gums pink and virile. It really would. He knew it.
He threw the tin of floss into the garbage. He hadn’t flossed his bottoms. He caught his face in the mirror. He saw some of the blood.
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