We keep them in bone-light jars,
these grins of silt and vanished teeth—
each curve a fossil of forgotten laughter,
amber-stung with time’s slow syrup.
Some are whispers etched in clay,
crack-lipped and crow’s-footed,
in the hollows of unmarked graves,
others glow like foxfire.
We label them in dead languages,
stack them high where shadows pool—
each smile, a key to a door that burned
before there was God and history began,






