I found your tooth in a box-poem by Macey Webb

I found your tooth in a box. It was your front tooth, and it was the pindrop no one properly heard announcing illness when it fell unbidden from your mouth one day.It was in a tiny box, with your name on the outside: Jess. The kind of box that earrings come in when you get them as a gift.  I found your tooth in a box with your toenail that finally fell off after you'd smashed it moving into the house with the crow's nest porch, on the same day that I realized that the extra pair of keys that been floating around the house, for months now,Are your set of keys. There's a key to my car on there.  I floated weightless outside to try it in the door, and when it unlocked, I knew for sure the things I've known now for months also.You're gone.  Your box of tooth and nail is lousy with cockroach casings, as they outgrew their small hard shells and moved on.Who needs teeth and nails anymore? The whole world is full of nothing and no one to fight. (And maybe this will happen again, but maybe not.  Now I know there's no way to tell...) I couldn't fuck you better,Like that friend of someone's with breast cancerWhose ex boyfriend went to meet her in the state where she was going for treatment at some famous cancer clinic, And promised to fuck her all the time while she was healing, Because something about how that is supposed to help, or something. I'm not even sure what the hell that means.   You didn't even feel like being touched most of the time.  Your wounds made you self conscious, and that's how i know you can't see yourself being brave. Because one day i could see your heartbeat, pulsing in the spot where the doctors cut out a chunk of your skull and then put it back, just calm and collected, not anywhere near as panicked as i was.  The thing you couldnt handle was how the skin glue stuck to your hair and flaked like dandruff, and the way people stared at the gaping scar when you took off that yellow hat.   We all have to believe we're gonna make it, regardless of facts. Poem by Macey Webb