For Falling Out and For Keeping

You asked your mother

if you could keep your baby teeth

and now you have a jar of them

on a shelf above your dresser,

beside a tin cup full of thistles

and a book of Buddhist prayers,

a red book, and purple thistles.

You told me once

you would like to die and be buried

with a mouthful of seeds, without a box,

so thistle could grow up out of you.

You said it was the closest

you could get to reincarnation,

and when I asked what the baby teeth were for,

you said they were for falling out

and for keeping.

The post For Falling Out and For Keeping appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.