Teeth, teeth, teeth, underneath.

Alligator teeth line my mouth, my throat, my stomach. The crow and the shaman in me want to sit down somewhere by myself and tear them out, one at a time.

Once or twice I've opened a fish that was torn up on the inside. It wasn't the mush of belly rot, a thing that surprises me more with its lacking than with its presence. It had swallowed something bad, something sharp. I understand that fish are little more than mouths and instinct and tubes, but I can't help feeling that they should have known better.

What does one do with the bits that don't work? Everything I help to ruin, I ruin in the same way. (This is not nehilism, I swear I'm only being pragmatic.) So how can I fail to change that? And how can I change that? I'm not sure any one of us could recognize ourselves without our myriad lies. So what do we do? Is the trick to tell ourselves new and better ones, honourable, desirable lies, until they become true? Or is it only too much whiskey and too much blood and falling asleep wondering if we'll wake up, and if we do, what we'll be? I'm not sad, but it is winter, and it is dark, and I need to understand. Honestly, honestly, what am I?