Rebecca Foust

Amalgam
April 24, 2025 Foust Rebecca

Amalgam

 

Mostly, what I didn’t know didn’t hurt me
until it did. The filling felt good, solid,

 

strong & forever. It was what people did
back then, when they could. I was glad

 

I would not wind up like my father, toothless
& old & alone. I accepted an amalgam

 

willingly, if not with full knowledge
that lead leaches out over time & builds up

 

in the body, sometimes seen later in X-ray
as a silver bracelet or anklet or ring.

 

That is not to say I regret getting the filling
or it was all bad—I don’t, & it wasn’t.

 

It plugged an aching void & lasted most
of my life, 46 years. We were a team.

 

When the time came to remove it, I hoped
for an easy extraction, replacement

 

with something less toxic & reactive, then
to go on as before. But the filling was

 

welded to bone, wedded to me in every cell.
When the drill bit in, my tooth crumbled

 

like spackle around a core stronger than what
it had filled. My tongue was incredulous,

 

seeking the hole in my gum, a deep, branching
chasm where roots used to be.

 

One kind of pain exchanged for another.
Metal still in my body, shining bright in bone.

 

How could I have imagined divorce
would be otherwise?

Rebecca Foust’s eight books include YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: Love Poems (Backbone Press 2024), inspired by the parallels between George Orwell’s 1984 and current American politics, and ONLY (Four Way Books 2024), recipient of a Publisher’s Weekly starred review.  Her poems won the James Dickey Prize and the Fischer Cantor Prize in 2024, and the New Ohio Review, Pablo Neruda, James Hearst, and Poetry International prizes in recent years.

 

Photo credit: William Harvey