Trismus

When I was seventeen my jaw snapped
shut, locked up the pearl of my tongue.
I thought all I could, which was oh well.

I dreamed that my body was all hands.
I dreamed that my hands were flat lumps
strung to their wrists. I could open my mouth

just wide enough for baby spoons of baby
food, Ensure, SlimFast sucked up a straw.
I lay on the couch and let the television

show me fish schooling through frozen
water, slick-skinned, translucent, tiny
hearts beating blood strong as antifreeze.

Lucky little shits, I thought, watching their mouths
O open in bright blue praise. At school
I said nothing, even when a teacher’s hands

swam over my body and onto the spaces 
I’d been taught were my own. Everything 
about my body, I thought, was my fault.

When the surgeon’s needle dove
into my veins, I saw my body burst into
a school of fish. I saw them swim together

until they were invisible. I watched until
I could be certain I had disappeared.