Loose Words

Words get lodged in teeth. A dental hygienist has actually extracted a few. Like bats words hang from the roof of my mouth, their subsonic squeaks jiggle its epiglottis like a witch doctor’s rattle. The optometrist wears her glasses over the bridge of her nose like intimate lingerie, she moves in seductively fishes into my eyes; her searching is a shadow-dance on the back of an exposed skull. Once her bright penlight stumbled over a word that should never have been out on its own. Immediately, a startled brain put on thick rubber goggles, I looked back at her like a deep sea fish, caught unawares by a naked mermaid.