The salt of theirs

The salt of their skin has its flayed geometry, sharp crevices beneath the classroom where my dark teeth tried the savoury chalk and failed. I have been a teacher for the sum of my disjointed life; never knew otherwise, never learnt, as I grew, how to study the breadcrumb where the heights have gathered. My students, ants in my breath, state they are builders of words in silence and thrive, feathered like fangless tigers, within death, my blandest subterranean birds.