What Makes Us Human

Once I dared to cross the vermilion border of those lips into territory unknown, there was no turning back. Everything before the border was just light brown sand, boring land, skin I’ve known.

Your lips are chapstick smooth, a pinkish hue, skin spread thin over capillaries brushing the surface of a million nerves. 

According to the Encyclopedia,

the mouth is the beginning of the gastrointestinal tract, the first stage in a complex arrangement of soft muscles and tissues, pushing and shoving food.

The mouth is the beginning of many things. The lungs find their breath. The larynx finds the transformation of sound to words.

Language begins in the mouth; it’s pushed and shoved by his words, her words, our words, pushed through the tract of humanity and ends in bullshit.

Tongue Twister

The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue is a fingerprint.

At the roof of the mouth just above the teeth, the tongue just touches on a word before it’s lost.

Our lips in an oval tapping out the t-t-t of the T 
in trying 
to make sense of us.

Tongue Twister

The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue is a fingerprint.

At the roof of the mouth just above the teeth, the tongue just touches on a word before it’s lost.

Our lips in an oval tapping out the t-t-t of the T in trying

to make sense of us.

Daily Workout

The sandwich is all cheese and meat and his mouth is all empty space, waiting. This is his daily workout. A building of the mastication musculature. Lips pulled wide in a grotesque gape, he pulls the sandwich in with an undeniable gravitational force.

‘But’, you might say, ‘there are really only eight muscles involved with chewing.’

Upon reaching his thin stretched lips- he’ll note the tongue takes a vigorous part in the chewing process- the teeth, smooth wide and white peel away from the lips to sink into layers of salted and cured, fermented and sliced.

And, you realize, it does look like a vigorous workout.

Oral Commissures

She talks about Virginia Woolf and Darwin as if they’re standing to her left and to her right. She stresses major points with pressed lips, a solid line to mark the definitive.

Her questions are oval.

When she talks about music and Virginia Woolf and Darwin she pulls her lips back in a near invisible smile. They are thin, drawn long to the edges of her face. The lecture is dry, maybe boring, not quite believable.

But when she talks with the hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth, Virginia Woolf and Darwin are standing to her left and to her right.

He Said She Said

You’ll never know another tongue like mine. She formed the letters slow, letting the words slip to the floor.

Because every tongue is unique as the pads of your finger. He replied, unaware of the current situation. More perhaps.

She could have kissed him right then, but turned and let the door shut with a soft click.

Each tongue is unique in both shape and texture. He continued, already forgetting
the shape
the texture
the feel
of her tongue.

Eat it All, Every Bite

Once he smacked his lips and slurped from the bowl, why would you keep eating?

Once he started sucking on the brittle bones, it was obvious. His mouth formed sloppy o’s and wet kisses as he brought each dripping bite from the plate. His fingers picked and poked, grease and chicken bits sliding beneath long unmanicured nails. He stuck each finger in his mouth, tasting each dirty nail, pulling morsels of chicken away with tarnished teeth.

Once the man used his tongue to lick away the juice from a lamb shank, what was the point in eating? He sucked harder- coughing, gagging on a kernel of corn, a hunk of potato, eyes bulging, air littered with visible chunks, invisible saliva spray. 

Your back might be turned to him, but it’s possible to see every slurp, suck, and smack. It’s possible to feel the spray of saliva, the minute fragments of tender chicken and lamb as it comes flying from a choking hack onto your neck. 

Takeaway would have been the better choice.

Imagine a Mouth Floating in Black Space

disembodied. 

Chattering. 

A wide, toothy grin. Just a floating mouth can do so much. Emotions flicker between happiness, grief, anger. The teeth can change from a grin to an integral part of a painful bite.

The mouth experiences constant stimulation,

Is a constant experience.

It feeds, speaks, breathes.

The mouth is easily forgotten because the mouth is always there.