Teeth by Rimsha Rahiman
Vee and I first met under the cantilevered roof of a bakery, two pink boxes of pineapple cream pastries in our hands. It was a glorious moment—rain dripping from our eyelashes, soot in our smiles, and the raucous flutter of a dragonfly between my ribs. He asked if I wanted to share the pastries. I said yes—yes, a thousand times yes (we laughed about that)—and suddenly we were living in the third act of a Nora Ephron movie.
A couple of weeks later, under the cool shade of a teak tree in Cubbon Park, we kissed for the first time, and our teeth clashed so fiercely I mistook it for passion. Our I-love-yous were followed unfailingly by the staccato rattle of clashing enamel.
I laid bare my heart before his canine smile, and he gave me his callousness in its stead. We began to circle each other in a dog-and-bone game.
I’m here for you.
Click.
You’re my only, and always, yellow.
Clash.
You should’ve known.
Snap.
As it happened, we tried a little too hard, a little too much, and a little too—always—to stop our mouths from bleeding. Smoke billowed from our home, and our neighbors, dutiful as they were, called the firemen to tame the heat of our recklessness. They arrived only to find the sickly-sweet ruin of pastries and performance. Anguish plastered to the walls, and our mouths still red-tinted, still smoking through the ash of misplaced hope.
Rimsha Bashir, born in India and based in Hungary, is a writer of short fiction and literary prose whose work explores nature, human relationships, religion, and the metaphysical.
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