Jordan Walker

Consultation 

I am eleven, blue eyeliner cooking
under the curing light—
I have just learned
my teeth are in question.

the dentist warns—
If you don’t get braces,
you might develop a man’s jaw,
a chiseled chin, a hardy profile.
He shines these words on me
as if they are unclean, as if
they don’t thrill me,
and I feel silly. You don’t want
that, do you?

I nod, learning again
how the body can’t be trusted. 
Three years, promises just a little pain,
then beauty—a no-brainer.

My mouth is forced open.
The green slime piles to the brim, drips
and globs down into my throat as I gag
silently—my eyes bulging and
drool pooling on the medical bib.

When it’s all done, the green putty hardens
into a mold on the counter and we joke
like adults at dinner,
me and him. I’m trying on
that new laugh I’ve been practicing.
The one that sounds like Blake Lively,
throaty, boyish. I don’t tell him
I find her voice delicious, that I want to lay against
every corner of her mouth like a tongue
depressor, feel her breath
on my cheek, die there.

It will be a decade before my mouth opens
in the ways it wants to, has always
wanted to. But in this room smelling
of melted crayon and chlorine,

I pretend to be good,
my thumb pressed white
beneath my fingers,
steeling myself
into something straighter.

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Jordan Walker is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where they work as a graduate teaching assistant and instructor of creative writing.