The stitches will unstitch themselves, the doctor says, but not before the roof of your mouth has fused with your bottom gums on your lowermost gingival palate. Your teeth in a bowl on the window you used to keep change in. Little executives, your molar sockets, taking off their suits at the end of a forty-year day, lapsing back into concavity with pension checks and dementia.

All the things you have not lost weigh against all the things you have not lost. On one hand, sutures and blood and a mouth sealed shut and a bowl that you used to keep change in; on the other hand, underpants with picot trim, peanut taffy, taxidermied family dog. Your mother’s hands on your face. The post-coital snore.

Uno set of teeth. Uno ability to speak. Uno kissing. Uno first-kissing. Uno kissing.