babyteeth winter '23, issue 2

winter 2023 issue 2

The mind is a frozen lake. olivia ho

I was sick the first time I went walking out on the frozen lake. It was December, and my hair was falling out in clumps, and I woke up each night drenched in a sweat that clung to me throughout the day. By that time I had been in the hospital for over a week, and my days were structured by a routine punishment that began with blood pressure at five in the morning and ended with a confession of all the sins I had wanted to commit but could not.

A frozen lake is an expanse so wide and so impossible you are tempted to think that it is not ice, fickle and melting, that stands between you and watery death—but rather that to fall through the ice is an impossibility like falling through the earth and into space. I was sick, and though I believed the doctors when they told me how much more room in my mind I would have when I was no longer ill, and though I did feel with painful and uncharacteristic clarity the constant and anxious haze of distraction that had prevented me from writing and thinking and feeling anything stronger than simply muted, what I most wondered about was what would fill the void that the sickness had taken. You, they said (smiling like you do at a sick person). You will finally get to occupy all of your mind.

The problem, I thought, was that I had been sick and numb for so long that the void would remain spaceless. And perhaps that’s the purpose the sickness had served in the first place.

To prevent the emptiness from spreading. To prevent the silence.

I was not yet convinced that I was sick. And I was not yet convinced that I needed to be well.

That day the whiteness of the lake was blending with the whiteness of the sky, and the trees in the distance were coated with the snow of the strongest storm of the winter. As I walked I felt sweat pooling under my scarf and my heart pounding some unreadable message into the center of my chest. And the emptiness, and the whiteness of the world, and the vast expanse of nothing in my mind—it did not seem so bad, so long as it came with the silence of a frozen lake.

photo by billy bratton

Chaos Engine Animal brain.

Big buzzy animal brain go brr, I exist to make I vanish, Froth at the mouth like a rabid cur, Whirring, Worrying, Shiver and And emptiness twitches flashing fingers The promise of aaaa new life Somewhere beyond the one-way mirror: Psychotropic ones and zeros clouds of one-dimensional rainbows Stacked on top each other: A junkie child’s vision of true meaning Bunched into a spear and rammed into his eyes Feeding the lie ignoring the signs of what’s going on here: Chaos to fear, Fear to desire, Desire to creation Creation of the engine.

The power, the glory, now and forever.

AaaaaeeeeeeEEE#*0f5@!!d}Vm@Si&%(8F&;Jfd]F2?nDX((+P@men.

jimmy carlson

Snapseed

billy bratton

you’re careless because you can be all tucked away under a mask of bemusement you take it off when we’re together and every time you leave more of yourself behind for me to melt over

Mess

i make a mess not a shimmering fulmination that rests lightly on you after the dust settles and makes you shine brighter as if your categorical beauty is lost on you no, the mess i make is sticky can’t be easily cleaned up a low glow in an abandoned building unwilling to be removed from the hard surfaces where you watched me spill out if i think about it i might be messier than you are i wonder if any part of me sticks with you maybe it’s the part i want to cut out of me so we could fit perfectly together my brain seems to work fine for you i could change the other stuff but you never asked me to why didn’t you ever ask me to?

Painting by Annie Bergmann

i watch you clean your room i don’t know how you do it but you wash me away too out of your hair kept from your eyes barely surviving on the bridge of your nose drenching your arms and the other parts of you for a little while until i’m all down the drain the feeling of you is so consuming that it almost seems original i know that i make you feel seen but it doesn’t matter because you know everyone else is watching you anyway your scent lingers on me and the places that we’ve been but maybe that was your plan all along

Gnawed

By Ashley Rosenberg

When I was little, I stared into the world’s big open mouth.

She had sharp teeth and a soft pink tongue that I could walk around on.

Bouncing like a trampoline.

On something that wasn’t a trampoline.

Playing hide and seek in the crevices of her molars.

Using the roots of wisdom teeth that hadn’t been pulled yet as slides.

Dangling from the monkey bars of her braces.

The world might have been ready to swallow me whole, but I was to stay whole.

What happened to the promise that vibrated in the back of her throat as I hopscotched into adulthood?

Fleshy bits of me are missing from where the world ground her teeth in her sleep.

She must not have been paying attention.

Why did she leave me with severed tendons hanging out like marionette strings?

“I can dance for you on your open mouthed stage” My feet sinking into her tongue’s gushy center as my tap shoes match the rhythm of the world’s breath.

But for now I’ll scream.

Open mouthed into her mouth, drops of my spit mixing with hers.

“You promised you would swallow me whole.

Instead you left me half gnawed.”

Photo by Amalia Pappa