My Mother’s Teeth

My mother’s teeth were kept in a bottle
marked with the sign of the cross. I used
to shake it till they’d rattle,
interest and childish horror fused.
They weren’t her teeth. They were mine.
My brothers’ and my sisters’, too.
The one’s we’d shed, as sharks do,
pearls we’d surrendered to time,
white and pointed, little fence posts,
sharp as spearheads we would find
on battlefields full of ghosts
we’d scare up in our minds’ eyes.
We all lay claim to borrowed land.
The bottle fit in my small hand.

—Angela Alaimo O’Donnell