lyric drama
- Apr 13
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 20
by Suki Lark
A Map of Missing Teeth
Let’s try this one again.
Okay, but this time you’re not allowed
to ask why. About anything.
I promise.
I’ll need more than an oral agreement.
Why?
Not clever.
But really?
Don’t play naïve. You can’t live
within a 5,000-mile radius of L.A.
without understanding the problem
of parents exploiting child celebrities.
But you’re not a celebrity.
Not yet, and now I can’t trust you.
The first thing you should have said
was, “I would never exploit you.
You’re safe with me, dearest child.”
No thanks for scripting me
as a creep. Now I need you to promise—
without sarcasm cutting through
your voice like a shiv—you won’t
trust anyone who says those words,
which amount to an open van door,
a fake Facebook account, the lead-in
to every true crime podcast
Mom and I won’t let you listen to.
Who uses Facebook?
Is that an ancient internet artifact?
You know what I mean.
Please sign your name on the line
if you wish to proceed.
That’s a blank page.
I’m procrastinating.
Later, I’ll fill in the details.
You realize that’s not how contracts work, right? For all I know, I could be agreeing to carve a pouch in my belly and carry you in it for the rest of my life.
You think that is the first thing I’d want
to swindle you into? I might be interested
in watching the self-mutilation part;
otherwise, a hard pass. I don’t want
to support your control-freaky tendencies.
Well, that’s a relief. I was more worried
you’d turn out like so many kids these days—
Dad, don’t say “kids these days.”
You’re old, but not as old as the Sphynx.
—who decide they can’t be bothered
to get their license, so they turn their parents into nothing but Sisyphean driving machines: 10K+ miles within a few months.
I’d rather bankrupt you
with bills from Uber and Lyft.
Let’s get back to the drawing.
It’s sweet that you think of yourself
as an overprotective kangaroo mama.
I’ve learned to appeal to your therian
side.
But we’re not doing anything
until you ink the page.
Fine.
See, that was easy,
and I haven’t extorted anything.
Yet.
That’s what I’m worried about.
You’re growing up fast.
Okay, where were we?
Here’s the armadillo-shaped sun,
the half-winged bird in the sky.
What’s underneath?
One tiny house and another
house shaped like a boot.
What’s the boot stomping on?
It’s not stomping. It’s stuck in the lawn,
which is also a torture device.
The way family is, for the most part?
You know how people say, “blades of grass”?
These blades take themselves seriously.
They’re like scimitars or the jaws of a bear trap.
Is that why the flower is wearing
a Band-Aid?
Nope. You can’t ask me that.
What do you mean?
W-H-Y.
It’s hard for an analytical mind
not to ask—
Don’t even say it.
Fine. Is this a blue cat?
A cat or an alien.
It’s sitting next to two tied-up feet:
three toes on one, and one on the other.
I take it six toes are missing
because of the torture device.
No. They’ve just always been like that.
How come?
That’s cheating.
No, I’m exploiting a loophole
within the parameters I was given.
See, you’re proving my point.
Why do parents try to exploit
their kids all the time?
You just asked why.
Doesn’t the rule apply to you, too?
Of course not.
Did you not read the fine print of our contract?
There was nothing to read.
Exactly, so you can’t pretend
that you don’t understand it.
I’m starting to worry
I have the hindsight of Lot’s wife.
I’m not sure what that means
(maybe it was clever?), but
Section 3b of our contract will say
there are to be no religious references.
I can’t undo tomorrow’s history.
Or can I?
No. The whole drawing is a map,
and the two feet are also a tooth
if you look at them as one shape.
Wait. I might be getting it now.
Getting what?
There’s a string tied around the tooth, and the string leads like a path to the door of one house, so someone inside maybe yanked out the tooth with the oldest tried-and-true extraction tactic: lasso the doorknob, lasso the tooth, and slam the door shut.
I’m impressed, but that’s only part of the story.
What’s the rest?
The kid who lives in that house is missing
all of his teeth because his parents
keep pulling them out.
You mean his baby teeth?
No. Teeth are teeth, little or big,
and all teeth are cash to his mom and dad,
who have dollar signs in their eyes.
I don’t like this development.
When they discovered the tooth fairy
was real, they started stealing his teeth
to cash in for themselves.
Now they have him on growth
hormones, so the only teeth left to come in
will come in really fast.
Late-stage capitalism makes people weird.
What?
I bet the mom regrets having a human
instead of a shark for a baby:
No! You will NOT get that terrible
song stuck in my head!
That’s my use of a torture device.
Baby Shark Sha—
You’re a dastardly villain.
Dad-sterly?
Groan and more groan.
I’m just saying a baby shark is an asset she’d never have to liquidate: imagine rows of teeth—hundreds of teeth— replacing themselves all the time as if on a conveyer belt.
Maybe, but you’re stuck on the teeth.
I’m caramel or blackberry seeds.
Or, in the case of a shark,
fish vertebrae, sea creatures’ membranes.
We need to move on. You’re limiting the plot
too much, and I still need to get
to the organ-harvesting scheme.
When did you fill your mind
with unthinkable horrors?
It’s not my mind,
and all horrors are thinkable.
You’ve read a fairy tale, right?
I mean, a good one.
Ah, yes: severed toes, severed tongues,
gore everyplace.
And who does the severing?
It’s not always the parent.
It’s always the result of bad parenting.
You can’t just shout “Gardy-loo,
I blame you” and dump
a chamber pot on my head.
Who makes Cinderella’s stepsisters
slice off their toes to try on the glass slipper?
The mom, but she doesn’t actually
do it herself; she coerces them.
As if that’s okay! Do you hear yourself,
your defensiveness?
I’m not defending me; it’s the mom,
but I’m not even saying—
You don’t think a mom can speak
for herself?
What? No, I mean—
Are you that M-word?
Mom?
No.
Misogynist?
Ding-ding.
No. I was saying back in their day, the Grimms, those old bros, used to cover moms’ mouths with their misogyny like a chloroform rag, so that step-moms especially would be delirious with villainous fumes, and then—
The mouth of Snow White’s
mom wasn’t covered at all.
I can still hear her lips smack
at the thought of adding her daughter’s
liver and lungs to her snack pack.
At least you’ll notice the dad
is never the villain.
He’s almost worse: too silent,
soft as goo—you know, the way
a marshmallow burns?
A rush of cobalt and orange,
then nothing but charcoal.
I mean the sugary goo in the middle,
the flaming epoxy—he’s that stuff,
clinging to the end of his wife’s roasting stick
until she deliberately flicks it
into the eyes of their kids
or brands their kids’ skin with it.
Wait, the dad is hot marshmallow glue?
Yes and no. He’s in two places at once.
He’s the smoldering marshmallow blob
stuck to his kids, and he’s also
a generic man in the distance, shrugging
his shoulders while smelling burnt flesh.
No and no. I reject these identities.
How did we even get to a campfire scene?
It’s not some effortless campsite;
it’s all flint and spark, kids trying
to learn survival skills in the forest.
Survival skills—with marshmallows being
a prime source of nutrients?
What else would a kid know to bring?
Maybe you should ask Hansel and Gretel
that question after their D-A-D
ditches them in the woods.
Fine, let’s get back to the dad, but not
as an incendiary marshmallow device,
more as a conscientious parent.
Conscientious? He hardly speaks,
yet he’s always complicit in trafficking
and starvation schemes. He just nods,
agrees and agrees without knowing the terms to which he’s agreeing.
Suki Lark is the name of a daughter-dad duo that disrupts traditions of single authorship from a shared writers’ desk. Their individual or collective work has appeared in a range of journals, including Pank, SLAB, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review. It is also forthcoming in Strange Hymnal and Behemoth.