PREDICAMENT

I text my dentist about my toothache.
At our last visit, she advised
I have three impacted wisdom teeth
and need to make a plan. That was weeks ago.
Now she’s closed per shelter-in-place orders.
She homeschools her fourth grader. She’s not
a teacher, but has to be. I ask for antibiotics.
The place my mouth hurts is the only place
a wisdom tooth had been removed. I slip
into the rabbit hole of pictures
with my granddaughter dancing. I visit MOMA
via my laptop without ever leaving the chair.
In The Persistence of Memory, Dali melted
watches in a dreamscape. I’m warped too,
like his surreal portrait of self and time.
If the governor opens the state tomorrow,
will I be okay leaving the house? Is my lack
of crystal ball-reading ability a blessing or a curse?
Same question about my 20/20 hindsight.
I swab the gum with a Q-tip and peroxide—
can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong
with me, a problem I can’t solve. I should be writing.
I watch a clip of Kate Hudson telling Jimmy Fallon
that if he’d made a move when they were in Almost Famous,
she’d have dated him. He blushes and scrambles
to answer, Life worked out perfectly the way it is.
I shake my head. We’re all Kate Hudson and Jimmy Fallon.
Tomorrow a man with a new business venture
will visit our house—should I take his temperature,
give him a mask? Will it again be safe to return home
to Connecticut, where I have grown kids, and granddaughters,
and a wardrobe for a colder climate?
Yesterday morning, my husband sat in a chair
by our bed. I watched him watch a YouTube spoof
on his iPhone; he kept laughing. Still in bed
with the dog, I sipped my coffee, asked him,
What’s so funny? Because he’s hearing impaired,
what he sees on his phone sends sound
directly into his ear via Bluetooth. He can’t hear
me when his ear is plugged with sound.

Cathy Allman’s work has appeared in numerous journals including Blue Earth Review, Bluestem Magazine, Broad River Review, California Quarterly (CQ), Free State Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Maudlin House, Talking River and Terminus. Her poem “Not in the Wonder Box” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.