The Bite Suite.

I. This One’s Teeth Are Mostly Dreams

You can’t eat with them.

You can only ache.

That’s what they said

when they looked in my mouth.

This one—

her teeth are mostly dreams.

Not bone.

Not ivory.

But the fragile scaffolding

of night.

You can’t chew with that.

Can’t bite down,

not on fact,

not on flesh.

They crumbled, of course.

Every time I tried

to feed myself—

an apple,

a name—

a piece would break away.

I swallowed them,

the small ruins,

thinking I’d keep

what I could.

I learned to smile

without showing.

To speak

with the soft caution

of the broken-jawed.

Still, the dreams grew back.

Shaped like canines.

Shaped like punishment.

I asked the mirror:

Who gave me this mouth?

Who thought hunger

was a thing

I could bear

with nothing sharp?

But the mirror only gave me

what it always gives—

a reflection

I did not ask for,

echoing

some deeper refusal.

This one—

they say again,

their hands cold and clean—

this one wasn’t made for biting.

This one’s hunger

must be metaphor.

They never ask

if it still hurts.

They assume

you cannot feel

what’s made of dream.

But I do.

Even now—

when I sleep,

I wake with a jaw full of ache,

and nothing

between my teeth

but the echo

of what I never dared

to tear.

II. Mouth Logic

The body is a system.

But this one glitches.

You were told:

the body is a system.

Teeth are tools.

Tongue, translator.

Lips — soft gate

to something useful.

So you tried to speak

in diagrams.

To match your voice

to what the world wanted:

clarity,

reason,

restraint.

But your mouth had its own logic.

It swallowed instead of answered.

It sang at the wrong times,

hummed hymns into skin

that hadn’t asked for music.

They said:

You bite too late.

You say too little.

Your vowels are swollen

with feeling.

What did they want?

A mouth that obeys.

A mouth that never asks

what the words cost

on the way out.

You started closing it,

out of caution.

You fed it sugar

to keep it quiet.

Still, it dreamed—

of cracking bone,

of hot cherries bursting,

of syllables

that left a bruise.

What they forget

is that even silence

has muscle.

Even a closed mouth

knows how to ache.

III. Chewing Through Silk

Beauty is not what you think.

It refuses to break when you need it to.

You were given

only the soft things.

Ripe fruit.

Kisses that dissolved

before they meant anything.

Silk,

always silk—

as if your mouth

were a museum

for texture.

You asked once

for something harder.

Something to test

the weight of your jaw.

They laughed—

Why ruin the beautiful?

So you chewed

what you were given:

light,

perfume,

a life without resistance.

It taught you nothing

about how to live.

Only how to please

without tearing.

Only how to smile

without teeth.

But silk is a slow violence.

It wraps the tongue,

coats the breath.

And when you finally bite down—

there’s nothing to break.

You miss the sound

of rupture.

The crunch.

The blood taste

that means

you’ve made contact.

Now you grind

your teeth in sleep.

Waking with threads

on your tongue,

and no memory

of the feast

you keep denying yourself.