Sharp Teeth: A Novel

by Toby Barlow

Driving forward, looking back, she finds there is only the loosest bond between time and pain some things don’t pass, the injuries don’t heal they merely find a place in our guts and in our bones where they fitfully rest, tossing and turning between our knuckles and ribs waiting to wake as the shadows grow long.

Each dog marks a section of our lives, and in the end, we feed them to the dark, burying them there while we carry on.

He said many things as the night wore on and she slipped down into the soft crook of his words.

you would not want to find her crossing your trail in the twilight. And were you cornered by her, eye to eye, you would see that there are still some watchful creatures whose essence lies unbound by words. There is still a wilderness.

We are all china barely mended, clumsily glued together just waiting for the hot water and lemon to seep through our seams.

In the timeless war between work and love, chalk another one up for work.

Words, those simple clumsy clay blocks that one hopes will support such enormous walls. “I do, I love you.” Words, the small weak things that come tumbling out of men.

In the car, the rap song has every other word beeped out as if the small words themselves were a dangerous thing, and not the ideas of violence and waste and ridiculous luxury that the songs clutch in their rough embrace. Everyone is always looking in the wrong direction, we worry about our lovers while losing our jobs we stress out about cancer while our children run away we ponder the stars while burning the earth.

“Do you know why they named these two lights Venus and Mars?” The big man shakes his head no. “Because, like love and war, they never arrive together and yet they are always there on the edge of the sky, so close to us. They never go away.”

For that is all there is, in various shades, within us each, behind every gesture, every nod, A little love, a little war.”

That was so many versions of her ago but the bruises that hung to her flesh for weeks then became shadows that still linger inside her no matter how bright and sunny the days become. Lying like arsenic seed buried beneath so much sweet fruit.

The secret must stay and—according to the scientists— the love will live. The heart is quite comfortable with secrets. After all, its home is a dark wet place tucked in among all the other organs who aren’t talking either.