Braces

I remember at 11, my friend complained of her new braces.

Of the pain they caused.

Of her changing appearance.

Of the new jagged sensation of her tongue against her metal-dressed teeth.

She told me how lucky I was that I didn't have to get them.

Everyday after this I pushed my teeth with the flat of my thumb.

Harder and harder.

Forcibly twisting those luminescent ivories of mine

out of their God-given mould,

in the pure hopes that my dentist would have to pull them back again.

Once I finally got my braces at 13, I complained like everyone else,

as per the script,

but secretly joy tickled my tongue every time it was cut

sliding along my armoured mouth.

The pain on its own is nothing special.

But I knew that pain meant healing,

and this all meant change.

A new configuration of gnawing bones.

A rebirth of the pink tongue tissue.

The ecstasy I felt in my metamorphosis was never about the end result,

of having transformed

or reached a destination,

but rather it was about the act of reaching itself.

Between what was, and what will be

is the only place one can ever know.

This space we live in.

Never arriving anywhere,

only perpetual journeying.

The day the dentist removed my braces,

I wept

from the knowledge that I had reached an end point,

that change was over.

He instructed me to wear a plate every night from now on, otherwise the perfect stasis I had reached would be lost,

and I felt joy tickle my tongue once again.

I threw my plate in the bin,

content,

in my home,

between a beginning and an end.