Jia Yi Ling
FISH BONES
When the seventh grade girls first saw
the decapitated milky head of
my Sichuan grouper,
lying in my lunchbox on a bed of white rice
with dark rivers of soy sauce & viscous oil
winding around it,
their beautiful paper-like faces wrinkled, like
the grammar worksheet I had crumpled
& tossed
to the side after spending the entire day
with the past
simple, past perfect past progressive and past perfect progressive.
I couldn’t shape my mouth to ask them
what the difference was between
a dead fish and a dead cow
that had been mutated
into round perfect circles before
being squished between two pieces of bread and
ingested.
I asked Ma to drive me to the dentist after school that day
so I could at least brighten up
one part of my body.
But all I could remember was that the
whitening hurt.
Reclined in the clinical chair,
I watched as the dentist, blue-eyed & blonde,
leaned over me,
slipping on blue latex gloves before
sticking two fingers and a silver apparatus
down, between, and in my mouth,
carefully pulling out the
shiny fish scales, ivory bones, and pieces of red Laoganma
that had wedged itself between
the crevices of my teeth from lunch.
When the whitening was over, I licked the
crevices of my pearly teeth,
savouring the lingering taste of fresh mint.
The toothpaste had erased the memories of Ma’s lunch from my tongue.
I smiled into the mirror, staring at the way my teeth gleaned.
My mouth had never felt so clean and empty.