Her Teeth by Julia Simpson

How wild is it that our skin peels off

if we spend too long exposed to the unflinching, un-

feeling photons that fly from our sun? Sometimes,

I imagine what it might be like

to explain this phenomenon to an alien, an intergalactic

foreign-exchange student. See,

I would say, extending out a blistered arm

one midsummer evening. Already a witness

to the progression of my condition -

having seen the moment when the sun bared

her teeth amid her kisses,

and I did not pull away quite quick

enough - having seen my body change color

and temperature, as if somehow, it absorbed

the heat from her touch

and now was unable, even in full-throated, fire-

filled desperation, to let it go -

my starwalker companion would lean in

close. Would they watch, I wonder?

Could they? Maybe they wouldn’t have

eyes. Regardless, they’d observe

as I tugged a loose layer of flesh from my form,

revealing a fresh swath of space underneath, pink

and vulnerable - the sun hasn’t

seen it, hasn’t set her sights on this

morsel just yet. Perhaps

my alien acquaintance is telepathic.

Grotesque, they’d think loudly, thoughts thick

with bewilderment, morbid

curiosity, and mild alarm. Will you survive? they’d ask,

speaking directly into my mind, and I’d laugh -

grinning through the tight sting

accompanying this strange, superficial metamorphosis -

and say, it takes

more than a kiss

to kill us.