extracted raze you walk through the door with no breakfast in your belly and five less teeth in your mouth, biting down on gauze to make the blood clot, one cheek swollen but not bruised, the other the same size it was when you woke up. for the better part of two hours, you show me all the things you can't say. i get about half of them right. the others get lost in laughter and bad guesses. when you tire of holding the flexible ice pack that used to live inside my lunchbox against the side of your face and you've waited long enough for the last slow trickle to stop, you spit out the gauze and chew up the leaves on the front lawn. but not with your own mouth. it's still got some healing left to do. 211120 what's it to you? who go blather from