Cracked Teeth

As he twirls a fork around in the storebought 

ramen noodles on the stovetop, painstakingly emptying 

every ossified crumb from the synthetic bag 

into the boiling night of the saucepan. 

Even with the hardest clumps, we cannot 

afford the waste of anything, seasoned or unsalted. 

We think of our children nearly decades 

out of the house and almost weep – now 

is the time. We decide poverty is a cousin of risk. Like college 

students sprinting through stipends, we savor every 

morsel of time. Seconds expand with great focus on 

every wish wrestled into fruition. Now, we celebrate. 

I unseal, crack through, and unroll the cans 

of tinned fish. I then break out the crusted bottle, delicately 

palming it like wheat-stained window glass. 

It would have been house wine at our old

favorite restaurant, at best, before the hard times. He tosses 

a few ice cubes into each stemless cup. Our cracked

teeth are worth yards of silk as we count out 

our undusted dreams. There is nothing more satisfying than 

shining shooting starlight upon the unbroken, 

blackened lines of tarnished hope.