I Will Hand Over My Skull

I’m writing this with my whole body braced.
Right hand: all five fingers on the keys.
Left: just the pinky.
No idea why.
It’s just what my body’s decided to become.

When I breathe in,
my ribs creak — like the floorboards in an old apartment.
Was I always this stiff?
Like a balloon left out in the sun —
brittle, wrinkled, still pretending to float.

Moments like this distort proportion.
The coffee I bought to calm myself —
does it taste good?
Or is this just what coffee always was?
What even is this liquid?

✦ ✦ ✦

The tension, of course,
comes from the dentist.

Teeth are buried in bone.
In the skull.
Too close to the brain.
Wouldn’t it make more sense
if the mouth were somewhere else —
on the forearm, maybe,
or behind the knee?

Why are all our entry points —
eyes, ears, nose, mouth —
clustered in a single fragile panel?

Shouldn’t weaknesses be spaced out?
Or maybe fewer openings are easier to defend.
I don’t know.
Who designed this interface?

✦ ✦ ✦

Today,
I’ll meet a stranger
and let them work on the bones behind my face.

Not just let them —
I’ll offer it.
My entire head.
Just hand it over, like: here.

And trust they won’t press too hard,
or too far.

Isn’t that a kind of rebellion?
Not against them —
but against instinct.

I’ve never studied medicine.
I don’t know how anything in there works.
But I’m meant to trust the whole architecture.
To believe that this person —
this person I’m about to meet —
is real, trained, licensed,
and knows where not to touch.

Because that’s the world, right?
You sit down.
The chair holds your skull in place.
That’s the agreement.

✦ ✦ ✦

I live in a building I didn’t build.
I eat food made by hands I’ll never see.
I ride trains faster than I can think.

I try to believe in the world.
I believe the Earth spins.
That it orbits.
That light has a speed.

Because apparently, billions of people —
smarter than me —
spent millennia figuring this out.

So I believe.
Or I try to.
Most days, that’s enough.

But when someone nears my skull,
quiet question marks begin to rise.

Today’s coffee beans came from Jamaica.
I’ve never been.
But if Jamaica doesn’t exist,
the system collapses.

The beans came by ship, probably.
I didn’t see it.
But I picture it —
slipping through the Panama Canal,
burlap sacks of glossy seeds
crossing oceans I’ll never touch.

And I believe.
Because not believing
doesn’t leave you anywhere to stand.

✦ ✦ ✦

When a single tooth comes loose,
the whole world tilts.
The horizon flickers.
The floor forgets how to be floor.

On the way to the clinic,
I pass a flower shop tucked into a corner.
Inside: bouquets blooming with contradiction —
flowers that shouldn’t coexist.

Different latitudes.
Different seasons.
Held together by ribbon.

No logic. No lineage.
Just color.
Just proximity.
Just the illusion of coherence.

That’s the world, I think —
a bouquet of impossibilities
knotted by what we don’t ask.

Don’t overread the flowers.
Just say wow.

✦ ✦ ✦

The appointment is near.

Listen —
Mom. Dad.
Teachers.
Pigeons overhead.
Ants by the curb.
The half-dead moth by the sliding door.

Please.
Listen.

Today,
I will hand over my skull
to someone I’ve never met.
I will trust them.
And I will surrender it.

Not just to them —
but to the scaffolding that produced them.
To the shape of society.
To the quiet architecture of belief.

I will place my fragile skull
on that vinyl-padded altar
because I choose to believe.

I go to the dentist
because I believe in the world —
in everything improbable,
everything invisible,
everything that holds,
if only just long enough.

That’s why I go.