Self-neglect. It claims my skin, hair . . .  and now, my teeth. My filthy mouth—bitten-off fingernail snagged on a cracked bicuspid. Flecks of yesterday’s Swedish meatball floating above a tooth-scape of jagged, sooty spires. Boggy, slow-bleeding gums. A spelunker’s nirvana. What's tunneling behind my smile? It’s only when—only when—I conjure Bette Davis and her beautifully foul mouth, snarling through those hell-red lips, that I shiver, unclench; and deeply exhale.
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Photograph by Lorena Silaj