Chompers

I went to the dentist, and they took a panoramic x-ray of my mouth. When they displayed it on the screen, the whole bottom half of my face was there: my nose & piercings, even my ears where you could see the empty space where my gauges are and the loops of my tragus piercings. My teeth are there in full array; my wisdom teeth show in the far far back, one totally buried like lost treasure.

Staring at the print, I imagine I am some ancient mummy with my elongated ear lobes and skull on display. I imagine the researchers working to figure the age of my bones and what my lifestyle was: was I spiritual? A gatherer? An artist?

During times when the words are slow and do not come, I remember how thankful I am to live in a time where I have all of these ways to let the words out. If I really were a thousands of years old, I wouldn't have known how to write, at least not in the same way. When the words are slow, they will come back because I am blessed to be an American millennial in the Pacific Northwest with x-rays and panoramas and a mouth full of teeth.