I was crying almost every hour of the day and all night. I was immersed in the party setting, which was taking place in a location that seemed like a morph of both my grandmother's house and my parents' house. I was standing on a stool in the living room, hanging curtains over the window. Using both of my hands, I clipped metal hooks onto the window fixture and in my mouth I held some of the clips with my teeth. You were sitting on the couch watching me. Soon afterward, I felt one of my teeth chip & slip-- I spit it into my hand. I was confused and started crying, as it seemed this had happened for no reason. It was dark outside and for a moment I sat in the grass alone, but you came to me. I had relayed the tooth dilemma to my parents. I insisted that I wanted the tooth capped immediately. Please! Some resolve, now! The list of party-goers was endless: your step-brothers and half-brothers, and parents and grandparents, and brother and sister. I retold my dilemma to one of them, he sympathized and then demonstrated with a smile that he too had lost a tooth.

Was this my birthday? Was this my party? What food was there? At one point, my grandaddy brought out a thick white paste that was served with crackers-- everyone agreed that the paste was too sweet and sugary. My stomach turned. A moment later, as if to take notice of a party event-- like the blowing out of candles or the passing out of gifts, everyone gathered at the rear of the house and migrated to the backyard. While standing on the lawn, I gazed into the expansive field behind the house, as if hypnotized, as if in a trance. I was almost paralyzed by what I saw next... a white unicorn with a tall, glowing horn. The animal bucked and pranced and when it seemed the creature was going to escape into the forest, the unicorn turned around to display itself to me once more before finnally dissappearing into darkness. everyone gasped with awe and speechlessness. I felt ultimately priveledged and realized that "mythical creatures DO exist."

A bus approached. In an act of defiance, you and I were the only two who did not board. Like the unicorn, the bus escaped into the darkness of that expansive field. As I watched it roll away, I saw my girl look back out of one of the bus windows. Her facial expression demonstrated the following: betrayal, dismissal, and she felt singled-out. As the two of us were walking to the back door of the house, a storm approached-- we jumped down and layed our bodies flat on the ground, careful not to get carried away by the forceful gusts of wind and the quickly appearing and dissappearing bolts of lighting. When I entered the house, ethereal music was playing and I felt more of my teeth loosening-- I spit out another bloody handful of white porcelin flakes and chunks. My tounge, too hesitant to acknowledge the disaster in my mouth, refused to slide over my remaining teeth. I began crying and exited the house once again.

I lept off of the porch and hoped never to return to the ground again. My flight was breathtaking. I looked over a moon-lit landscape with lots of trees. A gust of wind blew me higher into the sky and my stomach turned with butterflies, as if experiencing the terror of a roller coaster at its apex, at its climax. I slipped and drifted downward. As I descended from the upper atmosphere, I saw the glow of car lights, lined up on the road, waiting to enter the driveway of a mansion. At the gate of the estate, three figures entertained the prospective guests: two women dressed in pig costumes and a transvestite. Men and women in expensive-looking suits and dresses laughed hideously at them and continued on their way to the party. Ugh, I feel ill! I spit out another bloody assortment of teeth into my hand, this time, a brown stone was part of the porcelin jumble-- it reminded me of the "tiger eye" I had in a rock collection.

Suddenly, I found myself on the porch of my grandmother's-- I was looking for my mother in the party crowd and spotted her but she looked unusual. Perhaps her makeup was too bright and her hair too straight, perhaps she looked too young to be my mother. "Mama?" She walked right by me and led my eye into the direction of the living room, I saw her sitting in an armchair. "Mama? Mama, help?"