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Teeth
For knowledge, says the Old Sage, add; for wisdom, subtract. My head in a surgeon’s chair, checking Lao Tsu’s math as these teeth I barely knew I had (mumbled of as wisdom) introduced themselves—rude party guests—right as they had to go, their pinched goodbye-hello. Like learning you’ve been speaking your whole life in prose, or my late eighth-grade astonishment that I— confirmed a Gentile in almost all respects— had hung so long among the circumcised. Hard to know what you have, I’ll have you know. Harder to know what you haven’t. Knowledge! The nerve! Hushed up like a gulp behind the tongue, shrewdly shooting roots down at an age my gums were smug from rolling words around, when my morals (like my molars) proved basically interchangeable. Wise I wasn’t, but I wanted it so painfully then. Now I’ve had it—you have it, doc. You know the drill, or whatever you’ve got. Take it away . . .