Tooth Painter

He was tall, lean, serious about his profession, said it disturbed him to see mismatched teeth. Squinting, he asked me to turn toward the light as he held an unglazed crown by my upper incisors. With a small brush he applied yellow, gray, pink, violet and green from a palette of glazes, then fired it at sixteen hundred degrees. We went outside to check the final color, and he was pleased. Today the dentist put it in my mouth, and no one could ever guess my secret: there’s no one quite like me, and I can prove it by the unique shade of the ivory sculptures attached to bony sockets in my jaw. A gallery opens when I smile. Even the forgery gleams.