The cost quiets him. Years of rent for every mouth, back in the bundok. There, in the shadow-wild space of childhood: bamboo rod house, pitched palm, dogs that dripped from every damn curve in the road. Slanted panels that admitted the afternoon exhalation of clouds. As my father siesta’d, his country was a many-sided die he flung again and again in his dreams.
Being a man of faith is a tallying of investments. Hedge your bets, build something well. For the price of a watertight roof, 96 teeth can be brushed with acid and sealed. He considers the value of a mouth that can tear meat through the upcoming monsoon months, worries at the thought with his tongue like he does at the teeth loosening in his own mouth.
Years after water damage takes root and carves canyons into his lungs, another dentist peers into the gleaming brilliance of my open mouth and remarks on each tooth’s structural perfection. Skyscrapers, a ceramic city thrust against a crimson sky, all 32 of them white Cadillacs, zooming away on eternal red roads and in their trunks, suitcases full of my father’s American dreams.
Being a man of faith is a tallying of investments. Hedge your bets, build something well. For the price of a watertight roof, 96 teeth can be brushed with acid and sealed. He considers the value of a mouth that can tear meat through the upcoming monsoon months, worries at the thought with his tongue like he does at the teeth loosening in his own mouth.
Years after water damage takes root and carves canyons into his lungs, another dentist peers into the gleaming brilliance of my open mouth and remarks on each tooth’s structural perfection. Skyscrapers, a ceramic city thrust against a crimson sky, all 32 of them white Cadillacs, zooming away on eternal red roads and in their trunks, suitcases full of my father’s American dreams.