I spend the morning in the dentist’s chair, staring at the reflection of my open mouth in her glasses, hands and tools reaching in, a silent scream suctioned out, the porcelain crown chattering into place like a cup in saucer. This is my inheritance (besides the house and fine bone-china tea set), these bloody English teeth. Once, I read— could have been while browsing magazines in a dentist’s waiting room— that bone china is made by mixing bovine ash into the clay… but one supposes human ash would do. Later, Google yields a potter who’ll throw your loved one for a price. Perhaps, a vase my thoughtful wife suggests but I think you’d suit breakfast bowls, it was your favourite time of day and if I dropped one of you, there’d be a wisecrack from brother Tim about your gin and how you were far more smashed than that last Christmas. The Yanomami tribe grinds the bones of their deceased and drinks them in a soup (National Geographic, dentist’s waiting room, circa 2007). I too wish you could be part of me forever. The dentist advises not to eat for several hours and says the numbness wears off with time.