Sonnet

My teeth fell out. The ancient fear made flesh,
made fleshy, gummy, worthless without teeth,
which all fell out, remember? And in my rush
to find them, bind them back into my mouth,
to lash them to my gums as to the mast
Odysseus was bound to on the seas,
I found the ground below me further lost
to blindness, as though teeth had been my eyes.
I fell. I slept, maybe? I’m not sure. But
sometime later I found within the black
another blackness, ragged, like a cut
in space or time or both, a gaping lack
that swallowed me into another space
from which I won’t return to claim my face.