My third tooth fell at thirty-three – the epoch of brittling youth. I can sit by my grave, right now, know of what truly was buried: palm-sized sack of whatever made up a broken world up for sale. I whispered in his ear, the boy correcting the order of clothes on the rack in a corner that reminded me of burnt snow; he seemed to understand why they smelt the way they smelt, dead people's clothes; I told him I lust bones of teeth that never left their gums, and like an instinct still fresh like a musk-musty block of incense coal, he put his hand in my Fifth Element coat and drew from it a creak of orphic lament. Signs: strong cradling of adulthood. Offer them the Persephone of my mortality – the lips of a black mamba surviving the juices of anxiety. My breaths fissuring in contemplative aging. Cold, on the collar of his nape, I placed a tooth. I told him to set a price that would amount to a coin of bronze: my fare, and square the deal without haggle. He didn't need to look into my eyes. Knew so well. All that my premature over-birth ever needed was an itinerary, accurate on empathetic deviations – how he smiles at the customer that has just entered; gaze fixed straight on the coat, slow-striding towards him, her mouth parting in greeting, a tooth missing. Previously published at Visual Verse