The Tooth Fairy Ledger

The Tooth Fairy Ledger

I found the ledger in the attic.
A leather-bound book with gilt edges.
Every tooth I ever lost documented
with dates, locations, and a signature.

Not my parents signing for the quarters.
Something else, a different hand.
Precise and clinical and ancient,
recording each acquisition like a receipt.

Twenty baby teeth, all accounted for.
Catalogued by type and condition
with notes on mineral content
and something called viability.

The tooth fairy keeps a ledger
and the ledger keeps a record
of everything that ever fell
from the mouth of every child.

But the entries do not stop at twenty.
The ledger continues past my childhood
into my teenage years, my twenties,
recording teeth I never lost.

Teeth described as harvested
from a jaw identified as mine,
on dates when I was sleeping,
in beds where I woke up with blood on my pillow.

I went to the dentist.
Full X-ray panel, comprehensive exam.
All my teeth are present and accounted for
but seven of them are different.

Not the teeth I was born with.
Replacements, identical but not original,
composed of a material
the dentist has never seen before.

The last entry in the ledger
is dated one year from today.
It says: final collection.
Complete set, voluntary surrender.

And in the margin,
in that precise and ancient hand:
The child always gives them willingly
once they understand
what they are paying for.