**A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World, part 4

4. Inside the apocalypse

In a room with only windows, you reached into your mouth and
uncovered a hard swelling lump in the back of your gums,
on the lower jaw.
Pushing up slowly, difficulty
with ease like a birth,
the molar did not break the skin but rather
unhinged the flap
that normally kept it from its currently unusual exit.
A pleasantly interrupted light,
like the glowing television
snow piercing through a dense fog,
lit only a diagonal prism in the room outlined by the
measures of the window.
The rest of the space was left
opaque and dark where you had knelt.
“What have you done?”
You only picked up this voice
like a radio transmission,
vague and cotton-spun
like the light that entered the room.
Strangely your ear acutely measured the sound’s solid outline,
its cell wall, permeating a very
large
singular
pore
in the dark.
The question emerged to find
not you, per se,
but a place to nest.

The pink flesh of your mouth
pulsed at the mass pushing itself out of
your way, more questions.
Aching for a mere moment more,
you reached in your mouth,
grappled with all fingers at its porcelain.
It came out before you could pull it out,
understanding I agitated the molar earlier.
A memory:
chomping down on it too hard,
with and without meaning to,
flickered on the neurotransmitters of your brain.

This is not what you told the voice in the room.
Something that dwells within the
continuum of truth and lie
lived for but a brief moment,
lingered in its submission.
“It came out all on its own,”
you heard my voice anxiously assert.
You were only quietly ashamed, and
my curiosity to see what had surfaced
from you
easily subdued that feeling.

Between your fingers,
the molar felt so still,
almost
tranquil, with life.
You did not find it hard to grasp.
When you raised it to the light,
all your other senses held themselves back as you looked.
It was a crystal organism.
Its outlines clearly defined themselves,
an imperfect form formed perfectly;
veins piercing through its interior resembled
great purple fault lines,
lying dormant for centuries without even a threat of stirring.
The light from the window did not shine through the molar,
nor did the molar mute its passing.
It did not glow nor sparkle.
How it was, you will never know for sure,
but this tooth encased the light from the window in a way.
Its clear platinum membrane wall
simply could not let out any single bit of the light it absorbed,
if indeed that is how the molar came to obtain it.
If only you knew.
Another half-lie.
“ ,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
“ ”
I’m sorry, you proclaim
“
I’m sorry
”
you heaved a sigh, without any intention, really,
no motivation to be found.
Emptying yourself felt good, though.
You did not know whether or not you were telling the truth,
the socially desired side of a
dichotomous concept of real and make believe
where, it seems,
only you are vaguely familiar with
the map of its overlaps.