Mandibular Metamorphosis

I contort the face in the mirror, frantically fumbling for recognition. Sediment from fervently forced digastric muscle stains lips and cheeks. I pull and tug, votive offerings of violent velvet vasodilation. I brush, bleeding and receding, yet still he lies steeping between tongue and teeth. Pull, tug, and brush. Repetition is hollow. Dissection is imminent: sever the jaw and remodel the bones. Surgical sanitation. Allow purity to proliferate: a ritualistic, reconstructive exoneration.

I pry cortical bone from trabecular, tearing muscle and ligament. Severing every fibre that tethers me to unfamiliarity. Carving through the sinews of his mistakes. Split, snap, and saw. Until somewhere below slow-leaking blood vessels and cellular influx, I am immaculate. Wash me in saline. Sanctify my bones with carbon and spider silk. Promise protection from allostatic pressure. Wrap me in gauze. Vow that I will never break again.

Oedema and contusion envelop me, offering refuge from my reflection. I hope I am healing; I can’t tell anymore. Ache is spreading through muscle and marrow. Is this fusion or fracture? Lingering in uncertainty, torn between fear and faith, I pray these are growing pains. I vacillate.

I can sense it: under the cartilaginous callus, a new homeostatic rhythm is quietly composing. A subtle beating choir of pulse and fire. It reverberates with the promise of ossification: a body restructured, a reflection reborn. Granulation tissue blooms over scars; capillaries weave gold through epithelium, coaxing metamorphosis from the very atoms that bind me.

Dorothea Blythe