Every morning, my stepmother counts her teeth.
She doesn’t know I watch her through the mirror.
She never finds any out of place.
Never too few, never too many.
My mother died before I could speak her name.
And ever since, father has been alone—that is, until last month.
Even my jaded sisters love father’s new wife. Not me.
So helpful, so pretty—where did she come from?
After dinner, I happen to see her though a crack in the bathroom door.
She pulls something from her mouth’s roof,
a white snapping thing she drops in the toilet.
Why didn’t I warn him?
By morning, she’s gone.
And we find father twisting, convulsing, changing.
