solarcat

today i went to a sheepshearing festival with one of the admins m (the one i went to muppet madness with on monday) and didn't exactly see sheep being sheared - the crowd was too thick - altho we could definitely hear the sheep talking. we did however see some dog herding - i think said doggie was still learning but she managed to herd the sheep around, at least once they stopped giving her the side-eye and kind of shifting away from her - they moved in a tight clump of sheep which was really entertaining - and some maypole dancing and a revolutionary war reenactor showing a bunch of little kids how to hold a colonial era rifle and a guy carving a spoon and bunch of extremely chatty lambs and giant whoopie pies ("the big whoop") and a lot of wool. i mean, seriously, so much wool, so much yarn, so many pretty colors. admin m knits. i do not. i petted a lot of skeins tho. (also a pile of fresh shorn wool and an alpaca.)

i love that sheep sound exactly like the sounds people make to imitate them. i mean they really do say "baa".

tonight i met my sister for dinner (i had shrimp) and we saw the drama and i have no idea how i feel about it. zendaya and robert pattinson had just enough chemistry for me to buy them as two people who love each other enough to get married but otherwise, i dunno. i think it's well done but wow is it uncomfortable to watch. also it was shot in boston but if you don't recognize the street names you'd never know that.

I wear my grandmother’s teeth on my wrist. She mostly
used her teeth for smiling. Hi gang! Big and open, her whole
arm scribing overhead in joy as we approached. Seems
almost caricature, but it was real. She was real. I miss her. I don’t

know how she stayed, after all her losses, so cheerful, alone.
Decades alone, widowed young, alone by choice
in her bed. The teeth I wear are not from her mouth, but
from a jaw older maybe even than humans: walrus, fossilized,

bought before I was born that time she and her husband
flew a small plane they could borrow cheap, thanks to
his job at Boeing—details, details, the small gold chain
that double-checks the bracelet’s clasp, how much security

the details give us—to Alaska. My goodness, the romance,
the time, their lucky, white, poor and upwardly mobile, just-
post-depression, educated selves. Those teeth of hers
I wear are not recently of ocean or ice, and absolutely not

of this new ocean, this new thin ice, but dug from earth
and browned by earth, the rest of their original life gone. The
nerves and blood, the soft gums, the sensitive, broad
mystacial pad and its seeking whiskers. My grandmother

wasn’t like a fossil, which is what some people get called
when they get old. In the care home where she lived
for a few years or months (time blurs), they said her smile hid
her decline. I think again about the pass politeness, rote

manners, can give—their grace or shroud. Inside my mouth,
all my teeth sit still in their sockets, minus little bits which, in some
cases, are filled with expensive compounds my grandmother’s
daughter could afford and which I did not tend or value

enough when their care became mine. I know how loose
teeth can be when a life hasn’t held them or when life’s flush
fades, when the flesh sags off. I’ve found so many seal jaws,
dolphin jaws, porpoise jaws on the beach, in dunes, and,

whether I pocket anything or not, I always wiggle them
in their ragged sockets, count the cusps, touch each point, which
tells me not what they said but who, as a species, they were.
Are. Hi, gang! So sweet, so eager to see even our shitty, selfish

teenage selves. Inside my mouth, there’s a whole lot
of impolite, but I know how to close my lips around it.
The teeth on my wrist from my grandmother might
be fragile. I don’t know and can’t unless I try to break

them. She was such a joyous force. She was such a joyous
force. It makes me afraid to pull the bracelet over the knob
of my wrist, to stretch the old elastic, because I have lost
so much joy already, which is entirely my fault. She seemed,

to me, to always be vibrant with care. The teeth are loose
on my wrist. Once, someone put her finger on the small
spur no one notices below the last knuckle of my hand and
that is why I bought a different bracelet that touches me

where she touched me, with the same, delicate precision.
I hardly ever wear the other bracelet, the teeth, which
are really little squares, like lozenges to ease a throat, and
haven’t I been sore-voiced? Hey, gang! Her arms waving

like she was guiding a plane to the gate. The way
she would love whoever saw her. Really. Whoever.

--"The Teeth on My Wrist", Elizabeth Bradfield