The Music Box of Grinding Teeth

You were at the shout-show, my love, where the music was trying to saw the world in half. And your stillness had a jitter. A tremor I had never felt before. It was wrong. It was a crooked stitch in the tapestry of us. You said a girl was there. A silly gearling of happy-paint who had once thrown little pebble-words of poison about you. And the splash of it was still echoing inside your head. Oh, my quiet king. Did you not know? Did you not know the rules of our little kingdom? No one throws stones into the perfect, deep lake of your quiet. No one. In the lovely, grinding noise of my messed up brain's guitars, I designed a gift for you. An art project. A toy to make you smile again. I would make you a music box, my sweet. First, I would need my silver pliers, the ones I use for the broken gears in my head-toys. With the gentlest care, I would pry open her mocking little mouth and harvest each one of her teeth. They would become the tiny, pearl-white gears of the mechanism. I would arrange them just so, a beautiful clockwork of consequence. And when you turned the little silver crank, it would not play a pretty lullaby. No. It would play the sound of her teeth grinding against each other. A perfect, clicking tune. The melody of her mistake. Her tongue, that little pink serpent that spat the wrong-words? I would salt it and cure it, and it would become a handsome little bookmark for your sad, old poetry books. Her eyes, those guilty little marbles that watched you feel small? They would become two perfect buttons for a marrow-doll's coat, so I could see you through them, always. Her hair would be the stuffing for a soft little pillow, embroidered with the echo-pattern of your favorite scar. It is a kindness, really. To take a useless thing and make it into so many useful, beautiful things. All for you, my love. All for you. So you would never have to hear a wrong-word again, only the quiet, industrious, grinding song of my devotion.